Beyond the Gardens of Babylon
by MercedesCarello
Summary: The Scouting Legion never returned from sealing the breach at Shiganshina. Convinced the worst could not have happened, the Queen pleas that Mercedes travel in the tentative company of the Female Titan to Wall Maria; the clues they find lead them in search of their fellow soldiers, and into a world with far different horrors than those they leave behind.
1. Prologue

**An Introductory Note from the Author:**

Welcome to the first installment of my latest saga! Greatly appreciate you stopping by. This is the sequel to my story 'Hidden Lions', and although it may be helpful to have read it first, it is not required reading in order to enjoy. Additionally, it's important to know that 'Gardens' is largely manga-deviant from Chapter 70 onward, though where opportunities present themselves I will try to incorporate the manga when I can.  
Lastly, enjoy! Comments and constructive criticism greatly appreciated.

* * *

 **Prologue:**

 _(Shiganshina)_

 _It wasn't like this when I passed through,_ Jean thought over and over.

How could they not see clearly when the sun was so bright? They were riding, flying, through so many veils, so many columns of light…

 _It wasn't like this when I passed through._

Screeches, screaming, the crystallization of Eren's Titan form over the breach like the cracking of thousands of bones. There were no Titans in Shiganshina - or were there? What were the shapes running through the broken landscape? What was tearing them apart?

 _It wasn't like this when I passed through._ He, and Mercedes, and Marco, and Eve, and the Jaguar Squad, and Julia...it'd been night. It'd been empty, clear. Now he felt drunk, moving through a fog that was worsening. His throat and nasal cavities burned.

One by one they'd started seeing things, hearing things, feeling things. Panic had overtaken them. A few of them had tried to keep their wits about them, complete the mission, protect Eren from whatever it was that was attacking them while he sealed the breach. Now there was chaos, and a bitter smell in the air.

He couldn't tell if he was hearing the Commander, or anyone for that matter. Sounds came to him as though he were underwater, and they were broken into a scattering of individual syllables with nothing, not even a rhythm, to link them together.

 _It wasn't like this when I passed through_ \- it was the only thought that made sense.

He thrust a blade at what could have been a large bird, or a hand, or a grappling hook on a rope. It darted away too quickly to be impacted, skimming past his shoulder. Could he see the others, or were they just more shadows?

Jean was knocked from his horse and he fell into the lush vegetation that covered a pile of crumbled brick. He saw deep purple-red flowers and thought them to be blood. He struggled to his feet, toppling about, intoxicated, gasping for breath, sweating. He swung another blade at another shadow, another patch of roving light, and hit stone. His horse skittered past him, its neigh becoming a wail and guttering out into a groan, its body becoming liquid smoke that leaked over the ground like paint.

 _It wasn't like this when I passed through._ All around him was the lush green, the plum-blood. These plants hadn't been here. They were beautiful. They were everywhere. He stomped through them into the main road, ducking under things half-seen, the ground seeming to buckle underneath him.

He could see the Rogue Titan in front of the breach, its rising tide of ice like a huge mirror. Screams were abruptly silenced.

 _It wasn't like this…_

He could see the Legion flying, riding, soaring, falling, running - and then he saw the ground open up under their feet. Something grabbed them and pulled them under.

 _It wasn't like this..._

Jean ran toward Eren, his limbs heavy. More ink-like horses disintegrating in the air cantered in front of him.

 _...when I passed through._

Something latched around his ankle like a snare, and pulled him into hell.


	2. Chapter 1: Night Journey

**A Note from the Author:** For context, prior to this sequence (at the end of Hidden Lions) Mercedes has just emerged from a conversation with Darius Zackly at the palace. She has also recently resigned from the military. Valentin is her older cousin.

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Night Journey**

Mercedes stalked out of the cooler air of the hall into the residual heat that'd gathered in the courtyard garden, wanting to get away as quickly as possible from the Commander-in-Chief's laughter that she'd left behind in the study. Their conversation was seared on her brain, and she felt as though her mouth had been cauterized shut as a result.

 _"If you tell anyone about our conversation here today… You have not seen what I am capable of."_

Mercedes breathed deep as she darted along the cloisters. Every limb tingled with adrenaline - not only from his threats and the things she'd successfully learned, but her newfound feeling of power that she wasn't so sure she liked. He'd been right - she'd entered the political arena and she had no choice but to keep playing.

Her attention was redirected to Pixis' aide, Anka, moving quickly in the opposite direction in the matching cloisters on the other side of the courtyard. Mercedes paused, frowning, and lingered behind a column to confirm it was her. She wasn't in uniform, and seemed to be in a rush; Mercedes watched her turn the corner and head for the hall Mercedes had just left - Mercedes dipped briefly into the garden-side of the column to avoid being seen, and watched Anka disappear through the doorframe.

"Wonder what she's doing here," she muttered. It wasn't entirely unreasonable for her to be here, she knew - really, she had more grounds than Mercedes herself did - but maybe it was her heightened awareness for subterfuge that made her class it as odd.

"Oh good, you're still here!"

Mercedes turned to Historia and bowed again. The Queen was alone, her expression one of worry covered with a thin veneer of practiced pleasantry. She pushed a thick wad of something bound in leather under one arm. Her blues eyes had a searching quality that made Mercedes shift feet.

"I just finished, yes," Mercedes said.

"How did it go?"

Although an odd question - even odder with Historia's look of concern - Mercedes tried to be congenial. "Well enough. We learned a great deal from one another."

Historia was silent, then, which was Mercedes' final clue that something wasn't right and reminded her of the way she'd looked over her shoulder warily and veiled a request to see her again in a hopeful statement. The shorter girl regarded her with a critical eye, and then with renewed volume and cheer in her voice said, "Why don't you join me on the ride to the orphanage? You're heading that way anyhow, right? It'd be nice to catch up."

It was the same tone as before. Mercedes nodded, "Sure. I haven't been." For whatever effect Historia was trying to achieve, she added, "But if this is a ploy to lure me into working there, I'm on to you," she smiled.

The two of them made their way out of the cloisters and through the port-cochere-like gatehouse, where the guards saluted to their Queen. The last few rays of the sunset reached between the palace's outbuildings and ministerial offices, while the sky above them was a rich lilac. Historia's horse was waiting, the three aides Mercedes had spotted with her earlier already saddled - Mercedes shook her head when she saw Valentin flirting with one of them.

"My horse," Mercedes said to the guard that approached her, a little louder than necessary to make Valentin snap to attention.

"You're back," Valentin said, rounding the other horses with his own. She didn't miss the gratefulness in his voice that he tried to hide with a clearing of his throat and the addition of, "I mean, of course you're back." He leaned over as she approached and murmured, "Everything all right?"

"Let's get one thing straight," Mercedes said, reaching into her pocket to pull out Zackly's relative's signet ring that she'd just blackmailed him with, "I am not your little sister, all right? I don't need a bodyguard. I need you," she took his hand and pressed the ring into it, folded his fingers around it before anyone could see, "to go home, and tomorrow, to training. I need you to do as you're told."

The two of them shared a look as he pushed the ring into his own pocket. She was surprised that he didn't argue or come back at her with a cocky response. Instead his dark eyes looked past her and he nodded, "Who's that?"

Mercedes followed his gaze to where Historia had mounted her own pale mare. She twisted her body to secure the leather-bound item - now very obviously a looseleaf collection of dispatches and memos - into a saddlebag.

"Also out of your league," Mercedes said. She turned as Sabine was brought to her, held onto the saddle's pommel and hauled herself into the saddle. She jerked her chin. "Go on. Off you go."

"You owe me!" Valentin called back.

Mercedes, Historia and the aides rode out of the palace grounds, and Historia sent the latter off in different directions. At Mercedes' curious expression, Historia turned to her and said with a smile, "I told them you'd be enough protection. They have other things they need to do for the Office, anyhow."

"I'm flattered, though I'm sure not many would agree with you," Mercedes chuckled to herself as they rode through Mitras.

"Well, I think it, and that's what matters."

Historia led them through the quieting streets that rustled with citizens calling out salutations to her, and as such it took them a little longer to reach the outskirts where homes and businesses gave way to gentry estates and farmland. Twilight had fallen and the gibbous moon had risen, and Mercedes was beginning to doubt that the main purpose for their ride was still to visit the orphanage. A farmer taking his horse from the plough provided them with a lantern fitted with the new lightstones mined from the cave under the Reiss Chapel, and Mercedes took the lead with it into the dark landscape under Historia's direction.

When civilization was most certainly behind them, Mercedes said, "We're not going to the orphanage, are we?"

"There's something more pressing we need to discuss," Historia said. "Please keep going. It's not far now."

Mercedes wondered why it was necessary to go all the way out here just for a private discussion, but assumed Historia had her reasons. She swapped the lantern pole into her other hand and held it a little higher as the terrain became rockier, sloping downward. The horses slowly followed the pale, silvery glow like a second moon strung on a crook.

They traveled down a meandering path through a thicket and eventually, Mercedes was able to glimpse a body of water through the undergrowth. "A lake?" she called over her shoulder.

"A small one."

The downslope ended. The brush and saplings rose into a wall of older, taller trees, the ones on the cliffside opposite swept into twisted shapes like stirred tar and looming over the placid, gleaming body of water; an island covered in rocks stood slightly off-center close by. The horses traveled along the lake's clay-shored edge and eventually, they came to a small rowboat. Here Historia dismounted and tied up her horse; Mercedes copied her. Historia pulled the bound missives out of her saddlebag. Wordlessly Mercedes followed Historia into the rowboat and when the slighter girl picked up the oars, she scoffed a little good-naturedly and handed the lantern pole over so she could row instead.

"The island, I'm guessing?" Mercedes asked.

"Please."

When they got farther from shore - farther still from the civilization inherent in being earth-bound - Mercedes continued, "Perhaps now you can tell me why we're out here?" She was admittedly a little unsettled, having remembered her dream from not too long ago wherein she and Historia had indeed been in a boat in the center of a lake. She even thought she could see willow trees on one edge of the shore, and waited for a harsh wind - but there was none. The air was deathly still.

Historia drew her gaze away from the lake and met Mercedes' own; the moon- and lanternlight danced in her wide but determined eyes. "I'm running out of people to trust. I know that sounds strange, but...I have this baseless fear, like I'm not safe. It feels like…"

"'There are faces in the shadows.'," Mercedes supplied, quoting her dream.

Historia blinked at her. "How did you know?"

"Because I know how it feels. Is it the people you're with, because you don't trust them?" Mercedes asked. The oars stroked the water with a soothing slosh.

"I guess so. I can't help but feel like everyone's trying to use me. I've got a lot of things to accomplish and keep track of and catch up on. I don't know the game and I'm surrounded by people who do and I don't know their motives. They all seem to be on my side, but...my gut doesn't agree."

"Mark of prudence, I'd say," Mercedes shrugged, trying to adopt a more blase approach in an attempt to assure her. Another couple of strokes of the oars. "Presumably your gut tells you something different about me, unless you're really out here to take me out."

Historia managed a small laugh. "No, I'm not. I'd get someone else to go that for me if so. And yes, my gut tells me I can trust you, no matter what everyone else says. I think you've been put in some difficult situations and had to make equally-difficult choices that have been misinterpreted by those who don't know all the facts. That isn't fair grounds on which to judge someone. Besides, I've known you from training - those other people haven't."

Mercedes smiled. "That's refreshing. Thank you."

When they reached the rocky shore of the island, Mercedes anchored them by hand as best she could be holding onto a boulder while Historia climbed out with the missives and staked the lantern pole; Mercedes tossed the rope to her for mooring before climbing out herself.

"All this isn't why we're out here though, is it? What're we here to discuss where no one else can hear?" Mercedes asked.

Historia took the lantern again and they squeezed through gaps in the large, cold rocks away from the shore. "It isn't, no."

Finally they stopped in what constituted a small clearing in all the boulders - really just a flatter rock with a small scattering of evergreen trees anchoring themselves along the sides - and Historia placed the lantern on the ground. She sat down with her legs folded beneath her and opened the leather folder in which the papers had been placed. Mercedes sat with her and peered closer in the lanternlight. She realized she was looking at sealed letters as well as missives.

"I sent four hawks with the Scouting Legion on the Expedition to Shiganshina," Historia began. "Two for reports along the way, one for when they arrived, and one for the way back. The first one arrived when expected, but the last three...they arrived today, together, way ahead of schedule. They didn't even have capsules, empty or not. The Legion wasn't supposed to reach Shiganshina until two days from now and while it's possible they got there early, I find it troubling that only one of the last three hawks arrived with messages."

Mercedes frowned. "Meaning they were released all at once."

Historia nodded. She stared at the documents. "I just…" Her voice cracked. "I think something happened. What if they don't come back?"

Somehow, the possibility had never entered her mind, and Mercedes sat back to contemplate it. What if she really never did see Jean - or any of the others - again?

"I keep looking for clues in the first round of missives," Historia said, sifting through them, "but there's nothing unusual anywhere. If anything they reported remarkably low Titan activity - which would fit with them being able to arrive early at Wall Maria. I can't...if the Scouting Legion doesn't return, if word gets out that's even a possibility, I'll have even less allies."

"Well, we can't know for sure what's happened, if anything," Mercedes said, though something was gnawing at _her_ gut, too. "Maybe the hawks were released by accident. Maybe we should wait a few days."

"Maybe. I just wish I knew." Historia sifted through the pile again. "Oh, here - I remember seeing this - it's for you." She pulled out a rather battered-looking single sheet in a trifold folded in half and handed it to Mercedes.

Mercedes' heartbeat stumbled for a moment; her name had been written on the outside and when she pulled apart the wax seal on the edge, there was a short note on the inside, too:

 _Jean was being stubborn and wouldn't send this himself, but I know he means it. Hope you're well! - Armin._

Mercedes' eyebrows quirked a little and she opened the trifold; she was greeted by coffeestains and smudges of dirt, ink blots, a riot of scratching-outs, a sketch of a moon in one corner. Her name was written at the top, clearly, beautifully, and she peered to read all the false starts under the vicious, heavy lines:

 _I wanted to write  
_ _I miss you. I'm sorry  
_ _The weather has been good for riding, mostly  
_ _I wish you were here  
_ _About Marco  
_ _There's too much to put in here, but  
_ _Do you remember the road?  
_ _You'll never guess  
_ _I'm sorry  
_ _I'm sorry._

And then, at the bottom, a hasty but no less clear 'I love you'. It was the only thing other than her name not scratched out. Beneath it was a pressed, bell-shaped purple flower still on its stalk.

As though afraid the words might escape, Mercedes rapidly folded the letter back up and pressed it to her lips, closing her eyes gratefully as she breathed in the scent of ink, paper, herb. Something of her had been restored and her heart clamored at its return. She wanted to cry, but resisted.

 _He still loves me._ Pitiful as it was for the love of one man to breathe new life into her, she couldn't deny it.

"Good news, then?" Historia was smiling testily.

 _Yes,_ Mercedes wanted to say. She wanted to scream it. But as with most times that she felt joy, something quickly came to cloud it: the thought of not having the opportunity to apologize herself - of never seeing him again. Had that happened? Maybe it already had. As quickly as she'd felt so relieved, now did she feel an awful preemptive guilt start to snatch at her ankles.

She opened her eyes and, slipping the letter between her tunic and bra so as not to crush the flower, she stared contemplatively into the darkness. "Your gut is like my gut, I think."

"How so?" Historia asked. She shifted off her knees and gathered the missives together by tapping unconsciously at their edges with her fingertips.

"You think the worst may have happened already, no matter how much you wish otherwise. You want to know as soon as possible, don't you?" Mercedes said.

Historia shrugged and pushed her hair behind her ears. "I can't help it."

"I know. But you can't spare any additional forces right now to send to investigate." Mercedes paused. "I can go, if you give me leave. I can make the run. You know I can."

Historia stared at her, lingering halfway between hope and criticism.

"My only fear is that that'll be one less person to look out for you here," Mercedes conceded with a nod.

"Don't worry about that," Historia said quickly. "If things get bad, I can come here. It's all the protection I need."

Mercedes held her breath. Suddenly the remote location made sense. Her eyes scanned the immediate area without her moving - she felt others on her. Every shadow was suddenly suspect. "She's here, isn't she? On this island."

Historia smiled.

"How?"

"The same way you're going to do whatever you can to find Jean. Some people just aren't meant to be apart," Historia said. "You ask for me to give you leave, but we both know you would have gone anyhow."


	3. Chapter 2: Irony

**Chapter 2: Irony**

Every inch of her wanted to set off immediately, provisions and spare horses or not. Mercedes had to force herself to acknowledge that it would be best if she used the rest of tonight to rest, gather what she needed tomorrow, and leave under the cover of night. However, there was one errand she had to run tonight - luckily, it was close by.

 _"There's something else you should know,"_ she remembered Historia telling her as the sound of Sabine's hooves slowed from an easy _ra-ta-ra-ta_ to a slow _clop-clop_. _"I've also received word that the crack in Annie's crystal has grown larger, though how exactly is still a mystery. You know what this means, though."_

Mercedes dismounted and tied up Sabine outside the false edifice that'd been constructed over the tunnel that led to Annie's cavern-come-jail. Even now, a few days after encountering it for the first time, she still wasn't sure what it was supposed to be pretending to be. Nonetheless she walked up the pair of shallow steps that surrounded its foundation and ducked inside the main entrance.

Inside was largely hollow and without ornament or furnishings save for rows of pews facing away from her toward a window, as though in imitation of a town hall or church. Rather than walk through them she turned immediately left and headed to the back of the large space where a single guard sat reading by the light of an oil lamp on a table beside him - one of the ones Mercedes had encountered and fooled the first time she was here - a rather weathered-looking middle-aged man with brown hair that nearly blended with his skin in the amber light.

"You're back, eh?" he said as she approached. His voice was less than cordial. "There can't be that much more to see down there."

"Yes, well, it wasn't my decision," Mercedes said and fished in her pocket for the medal Pixis had given her.

He eyed it as she procured it, closing his book with a finger hooked into it to mark his place. He seemed unimpressed. "I don't know what good you think that'll do you. I heard you resigned today. As far as I'm concerned no matter what kind of fancy doo-dads you have, you don't have any kind of jurisdiction anymore. You're just a citizen, now."

Although it'd always been a risk, Mercedes had been hoping. She didn't want to threaten or harm anyone, but she struggled to think of an alternative. She nonetheless opened her mouth to revisit her old charm, but was interrupted by the door opening behind them.

A petite girl with wavy, ash-colored hair unshouldered her rifle as she came in, followed shortly by the thick chimes of a clock outside striking midnight. "I hath arrived!" she cackled with a cattish grin.

The guard grunted. "Only an hour late today. I suppose I should feel flattered."

The girl waved a hand dismissively, "Think what you want, Sid." She then turned her attention to Mercedes, seeming a little curious before mischief took over her features again. "You must be Sol's girlfriend. He was talking about some curly-haired chick the other night. Come to see him, huh?"

Mercedes quickly disguised a retort, recognizing this could be her way in.

"You can't be serious," Sid, behind her, said. She heard him picking up his rifle frm where it'd leant against the wall.

"You found me out," Mercedes said, feigning sheepishness. "I know I shouldn't distract him while he's on duty, but…"

"I knew it!" the girl made a triumphant fist. "He totally owes me a beer. Yeah he's down there, go ahead. I won't tell."

Sid sighed and muttered, "Do what you want. My shift's over - been over - anyway. This shit ain't on my watch." He shoved past the two young women, tucking his book under his arm and fishing out a cigarette case as he left.

"Thanks," Mercedes said, pocketing her medal.

The girl took up her spot in Sid's recently-vacated chair, leaning back in it and crossing her legs. "Don't mention it. I just like messin' with him."

Mercedes moved past her, the two of them eyeing one another, and disappeared through the small door. She descended the sconce-lit rickety spiral stairs that rifled the large vertical tunnel, trying to keep her eyes on where her feet would go next rather than the enticing gold pool of light several storeys below. The half-drawn office-like area at the bottom was as deserted as the first time she'd been here and this time she didn't linger, passing through the short but wide horizontal side-tunnel that led to Annie's chamber.

She emerged into the pale glow, and stopped short. Sol's panicked face looked over at her entry from where he crouched beside the crystal - he held a chunk of it in his hands, and dropped it when another, larger piece tried to shear off - he pressed his hands against the piece to hold it in place.

"This isn't what it looks like, Warden!" he said, his babyish face sweaty and red. He tried to wrestle some of the bindings that held the crystal lower to secure the piece he held.

Her eyes wide, her mouth curled into an amazed frown, Mercedes hurried over to him. "What the fuck, Feigenbaum?" Her first instinct - much like his, she imagined - was to try to hold pieces of the crumbling crystal together; smaller pieces ground beneath their shoes. She glared at him. "You better start explaining."

"I - I don't know what happened. I was just guarding like usual and then I hear something crack so I look over at her and then all these cracks start appearing and spreading and then pieces start falling off and oh god I'm gonna get fired and -"

"Nevermind! Shut up - shut up," Mercedes hissed. Another piece sluiced off above their heads and they dipped away as it crashed to the floor, leaving sparkling dust in their hair. Exposed edges cut into their palms.

She glanced over the crystal as best she could from her current angle. Sure enough, a myriad of cracks was spreading through the crystal along its internal facets, forming a frosty web that obscured Annie. One of her legs was now hanging free, and her left shoulder and back was now open to the air. There was no sign of what had prompted the cracking, or that it was going to stop. As the right side completely destabilized the bindings, having no anchor, slipped loose, making the rest of the crystal jerk downward and hit the ground.

"Let it go, get back," Mercedes ordered and the two of them scrambled backward, powerless to do anything but watch in horror.

The top portion crumbled; the bindings released the rest. The crystal fell completely to the ground and burst apart on impact, melodiously scattering icy, sharp pieces everywhere. More sparkling dust briefly misted the air, then fell to settle on every surface - including Annie Leonhardt, who lay still and unmoving in the glassy wreckage.

In the silence that followed, Sol began to whimper, "Oh shit...oh shit…"

Mercedes couldn't help but agree. She looked behind them at the mouth of the tunnel, listening for footsteps. Still glancing over her shoulder a couple of times, she hurried over to Annie with the all-important question that no one had been able to answer, and crouched next to her to answer it. First she threw off a couple of large pieces of crystal that'd fallen on her, and then Mercedes pressed a couple of fingers against the pulse-point in Annie's neck.

Beating. Faintly, slowly, but beating.

The knowledge suddenly pressed on Mercedes like a ton of bricks. Annie - the Female Titan - was alive. Her body tensed and her throat grew dry.

"Is she…?" Sol whispered.

"Yes," Mercedes whispered back. She pulled back her hand.

Somehow, the possibility had never entered her mind, and now that it was a reality she was uncertain what to do. Historia seemed to have given it a lot of thought, what with warning Mercedes that if the crystal were ever shattered and Annie were somehow alive, she -

 _Couldn't promise what might happen to her at the hands of any of the military forces,_ Mercedes remembered her saying. Even then, she hadn't thought it possible. She'd only nodded in agreement to a hypothetical that she'd never be personally invested in - didn't _want_ to be personally invested in, after the mess the plot of her kidnap had landed Mercedes in.

Now that it was real, she remembered all the death and destruction Annie had caused, the betrayal of everyone around her. She'd made an enemy of everyone, and knew so much - and Historia wanted mercy for her? It left a sour taste in Mercedes' mouth.

But then, she remembered the tidelines of wiped-away dust on the crystal's face over Annie's own, Sol's comment that Armin had been a frequent visitor. She remembered those distant times she'd spent with the 104th, before everything had gone wrong. She looked at Annie lying at her feet, and as quickly as she realized she could easily kill her here and now, even make it look like she'd been dead on emergence, she was reminded of the last time she'd acted on vengeance.

 _They'll interrogate her, then they'll likely kill her anyway. In fact, they may never get round to the interrogation. Could we ever trust them not to, no matter the Queen's wishes?_

"Hitch! Hey!"

Mercedes spun on her heel, grating crystal underneath it, to find the target of Sol's nervous voice. The ashen-haired girl she'd left up top stood at the mouth of the tunnel staring at Annie. Instinctually, Mercedes reached behind her to the hilt of her knife.

"Please don't tell anyone," Sol was begging as the girl slowly approached. "It wasn't anything to do with us…"

Mercedes remained crouched, waiting to draw her knife if needs be. The girl ignored Sol completely; her eyes never left Annie. She came to stand over them.

"Hitch?" Sol called hesitantly.

 _Hitch, huh,_ Mercedes logged for later. _What's her connection…_

"Annie," Hitch mumbled, her shocked and worried expression a far cry from the mischief Mercedes had witnessed up top. Her mouth opened again once or twice before settled on, "Is she alive?"

"What's it to you?" Mercedes asked, unmoving.

"Is she alive?" Hitch shouted, balling a fist but still not tearing her eyes away.

Intrigued, Mercedes answered, "Yes."

Hitch appeared to rapidly assess the situation, blinking several times and her face moving through several other expressions. She seemed at war with herself. After a few more moments she finally looked at Mercedes and exclaimed, "You have to get her out of here. Please."

Surprised by the plea, Mercedes narrowed her eyes. "Why do you -"

"No, right now. You have to go," Hitch crouched and tried to haul Annie up. "You have to take her and go, before anyone sees you."

Mercedes pulled Annie's other arm over her shoulders and she and Hitch lifted her from the ground between them. "Do you even know who I am? I could be anybody."

"No you're not, you're that Carello girl. You know Armin and Eren and the others," Hitch said. "Come on." She began to walk toward the tunnel and Mercedes had no choice but to follow. Sol trailed them, mumbling half-hearted objections. "If anyone else gets their hands on her they'll kill her. You have to get her out of here. Please. I've never begged for anything sincerely before in my life."

"Why are you doing this?" Mercedes asked, letting incredulity leak into her voice.

"She's my friend, okay? Maybe my only one. Wouldn't you do the same for your friend? I know she's done some shit but just - just give her a chance. Maybe she can help. Please."

"How do I know you won't just frame me?"

"You don't," said Hitch, "just like I don't know that you won't just kill her or bring her to those who will."

The two young women stared at one another for a tense couple of moments, unblinking. Mercedes saw the sincerity in the amber eyes across from her own.

 _I hope we know what we're doing,_ Mercedes thought. "Fine. Let's get to my horse." She looked behind her at the tall, bumbling Sol, "You'd better not breathe a word."

"But what am I supposed to do? It was on my watch," Sol croaked and clung to his rifle.

"Hitch here is going to knock you out when we're done here and leave you in the cavern, and I'm going to send a letter to the Queen explaining your innocence, all right?" Mercedes said. "Stop panicking."

At the bottom of the stairs Sol took over, picking Annie up in a piggyback, and the three of them ascended. It seemed to take forever - Mercedes felt like every stone, every step, was a pair of eyes looking at them. Hitch scampered ahead by a few steps and at the top, verified there was no one around before they emerged into the purposeless building and did the same for the outside. The three of them hurried over to Mercedes' horse and she pulled herself into her saddle first before they sat Annie in front of her.

"I can't believe I'm doing this…" Mercedes mumbled to herself. Hitch threw a blanket around Annie's shoulders and pulled one edge over her head like a hood.

"I can't believe _I'm_ doing this," Sol whined as he untied the mare and handed Mercedes the reins.

Mercedes turned Sabine and she stamped her feet in readiness. She looked between the two Military Police soldiers, their uncertain and desperate faces. She sighed. "Don't knock him out. Go right now to the palace and ask to see the Queen; tell whoever objects that I sent you and don't explain anything else. Don't explain to anyone but the Queen. Tell her I'm safe."

"Where will you go?" Sol asked.

"I can't tell you, for the safety of everyone here." Mercedes wrapped an arm around Annie's barely-warm torso, and then jerked her head in the vague direction of the palace. "Go. Now. Don't stop until you're there."

Hitch hit Sol's arm to get him moving and they jogged into the night; the consequences of abandoning their post would have to wait. Mercedes waited until they were out of sight before she took a deliberately leisurely pace in the direction of the Stohess gate, knowing that a galloping horse would raise too much attention. The irony of being the one to actually smuggle Annie Leonhardt out of captivity, after the chaos of having thwarted someone else's plan to do just that, was not lost on her.

 _But where_ can _I go that's safe?_ she thought. She felt like she was carrying a basket of cooked meats through a refugee camp. Her eyes scanned everywhere, unrelenting, expecting to be spotted or shot at or grabbed. But the streets were sleepy, only just losing their warmth from the day, a weak breeze rustling pleasantly through the trees lining the avenue. _And what will I do once I get there?_


	4. Chapter 3: The Third and the Fourth

**Chapter 3: The Third and the Fourth**

Luckily, no one at the Stohess gate seemed that interested in Mercedes as she left, the guards too busy arguing over something trivial. She slipped through and past the light of the torches, her and Sabine blending with the night - once she was past the few pieces of village that clung to the outer Wall Sina, she prodded Sabine's flanks with her heels and they blended with the night breeze, too. She rode as quickly as she felt was safe on account of Annie's mysterious condition, making as direct a route as possible to Klorva. Although it would have been faster to cut through Mitras, Mercedes rathered it take longer yet be more solitary - it'd also mean Klorva would be much quieter when she got there.

 _I don't have much of an alternative,_ Mercedes thought, letting Sabine guide herself home on their more familiar routes through the moonlit landscape so she could think. _At least it can be temporary until I figure out what to do with her. If she even wakes up. What if she's in a coma?_

There weren't any doctors around that she trusted, and while her and Julia's medical knowledge wasn't anything to sniff at, they weren't proficient at dealing with illnesses that couldn't be seen. It was an unwelcome burden that tempted her to simply dump Annie in the woods they now rode through - she was anxious to be leaving the Walls rather than be saddled with a reason to stay.

 _Unless...unless Annie has any clues as to what may have happened to the Scouting Legion? If Reiner and Bertolt are still out there, maybe it was something of their doing? I could use Annie for leverage in that case. But lugging a dead weight around…_

Sabine snorted happily as they cut through an old quarry, practically dancing down the slope with its interludes of scree and zigzagging workpath. Loose rocks sluiced and bumped into old timber and rusty broken carts. Sabine found the stream that bordered the opposite side - nearly run dry after the unusual droughts this summer - and various night creatures darted back into the undergrowth as they began to follow it. It'd take them almost all the way to Klorva.

 _I still need to figure out how to get my gear back, since I had to turn it in with my uniform. I can't go all the way to Shiganshina with just rifles. Although Fhalz and Baena are grounded for the time being due to injury I can't take theirs. Not to mention where am I going to find horses… I've already called in a lot of favors._

By the time Mercedes reached Klorva, desperation had clenched a fist around her throat and the bleakness of her situation had intensified. She'd resorted to telling herself to simply go to bed and work on it tomorrow with renewed vigor, but of course, the first thing she had to deal with was sitting directly in front of her.

Mercedes walked Sabine into the yard in front of her grandmother's house, which was by and large dark except for a low light in the kitchen that shone out of the leftmost ground-floor window and the ajar front door to its right. Julia sat in a rocking chair dragged out onto the perpetually swept-clean dirt around the front doorstep, her broom-come-walking-stick propped against the wall beside her and her feet on a little footstool. Her hands were folded expectantly in her lap and despite her tiny stature, she managed to intimidate Mercedes for the first time in several months. She stopped Sabine.

"Where have you been?" Julia muttered. She groped behind her for her broom. "Fhalz said you went to the market," she didn't even seem to be pretending to have been taken in by the excuse.

Mindful of Zackly's threat, Mercedes said, "Nowhere important. Why'd you stay up?" She carefully began to get down from her saddle one-handed, using the other to keep Annie in it, bowed over Sabine's neck.

What little light there was managed to collect in Julia's sharp eyes as she hobbled closer. "I'm calling bullshit on that but first things first - who's this?" She nodded at Mercedes bundling Annie tighter and pulling her gently out of the saddle.

Mercedes hid her face for a moment, trying to come up with a quick lie that wasn't exactly a lie. She didn't like lying to her grandmother and wasn't very good at it, but at least this would be easier what with her never having seen the Female Titan's true identity. "An old friend," Mercedes settled on. "We had a few drinks, she passed out." As soon as it was out of her mouth, she knew it'd been a bad call.

"Need I remind you that I had five sons and married the trickster god himself? I don't smell any alcohol," Julia mumbled, but nevertheless tied Sabine temporarily to the plum tree and did what little she could to help Mercedes carry Annie toward the house.

"Are the others still here?" Mercedes asked.

"Yes. They're in your parents - I mean your - room. You're lucky Emma chose to go stay with a friend tonight," Julia said.

"Emma?" Mercedes smirked. She wanted to laugh at the fact that it'd taken her grandmother nearly a month to bother learning Mrs Kirstein's first name.

"Shut up. If she's living in my house I figured I'd best know."

"Only took you a month."

"You're in no position to berate me. I know where you went." Julia kicked the front door closed behind them. She blocked Mercedes from retreating up the narrow stairs immediately to the right; her expression was unforgiving and it made Mercedes nervous - not because of anything Julia might do, but because of what it might mean if she _did_ know who she had gone to see in the Interior.

"No you don't," Mercedes tried to bluff with a shrug and a smaller smirk.

Julia tilted her chin up. "You saw Zackly, didn't you?"

Mercedes froze, her composure disintegrating before she could even pretend to hold it together. Julia's lips drew into her mouth and her eyes grew wide; she slapped Mercedes, hard. Mercedes took her time in turning her head back to her, and didn't look up immediately.

"Why don't you ever listen?" Julia seethed. "Do you not remember what I told you? What he did to your uncles? To me? What he likely did to your grandfather and your other uncles? Do you not remember what he did to _you_ in Stohess?" Her claw-like hand seized Mercedes' jaw and her bony fingers dug into it like teeth as she shook her, "He hung you out there like a piece of meat and let them shoot at you! He tried to make you a scapegoat for the Breach by Fire! Stupid, stupid girl - you're making a mockery of us!" she viciously released Mercedes' face but the fire in her eyes still burned strongly. Her nostrils flared. She put one hand on her hip, looking her up and down. "Did you kill him?" There was a kind of crazed hope in her voice.

"No," Mercedes said. "No." She readjusted her hold on Annie and in the process, noticed her breathing was deeper, more even - Mercedes almost thought she was attempting to hold herself up a little. Was she awake? Merely pretending to still be unconscious?

"Although I wish you had ripped that fucker to pieces, I suppose that would have meant that you'd never have come home, wouldn't it," Julia said, distracting her. "Still. Reckless as always. You were always going to forge your own way, weren't you," although her voice was derisive, Julia reached out and tenderly cupped the cheek she'd slapped earlier. She shook her head and moved out of the way, waving a hand, "I barely know what to do with you anymore. Like your parents."

Julia hobbled away into the kitchen and, stung, Mercedes was left to retreat up the stairs alone. Despite Annie being a good four inches shorter and somewhat lighter, it was slow-going with such little space to work with and the tight turns, and part of Mercedes wished Annie was indeed awake. At the top of the stairs she immediately turned right, into her childhood room that had since been given over to Mrs Kirstein while she stayed with them until her own home was rebuilt. Mercedes lugged Annie inside, temporarily slumping her on the floor with her head resting on the neatly-made single bed while she found something else to constitute a mattress. A quick dart over to the small linen closet in the hall told her that the spares were already being used by her squad in the other room.

Mercedes ran a hand through her hair and closed the door behind her. She stood over Annie and sighed. _Fine,_ she thought grouchily and hauled her all the way onto the bed, laying her flat on her back but took the pillow for herself. She dragged her chair closer to her trunk and made herself comfortable in it, propping her feet up. She stuffed the pillow behind her head and laced her fingers over her stomach, staring at Annie. At least this way, she supposed, she wouldn't get so comfortable that Annie might kill her in her sleep.

"What a mess," she whispered to the room. She settled into the quiet, allowing herself the space to think and to feel that she had denied herself for the last day or so. Idly, one hand reached into her tunic and pulled out Jean's letter, slowly opening it.

Immediately the words 'I love you' stood out to her, like they'd been written in gold rather than ink. She passed her fingertips along the underside of the words to feel the indents - he pressed too hard - and then over the top of everything he'd written, the sketch of the moon, the creases and smudges, the pressed flower, the shard of fingerprint he'd made by accident in a blot. How long had this taken him? What else would he have said if more time had allowed? Why had he waited until he was so far away?

 _What could have happened?_ she wondered. _I said the hawks may have been released by accident, but what if they were released because whomever held them is dead now? If there are few - if any - Titans in the area, what could have attacked them? And if it's something more dangerous than Titans, do I really stand a chance if I go alone?_

Mercedes was aware she was building bridges from smoke. Grateful as she was that the letter at least gave her a clue about Jean, she wished she could divine something about his circumstances as a whole. He'd given her a moon, and a flower.

 _This is the moon from a week ago,_ she realized, running her thumb over its back. _And the flower…_ she carefully used a fingernail to lift it from the page, angled it in the moonlight to examine. The bell shape had been flattened, but she thought she could see that originally the mouth had ended in five tapered points, like a star; the deep plum-purple of the bell became a mossy green toward the emerald sepals that capped it. It was hard to identify without a leaf, but luckily much of the color remained, meaning it was fairly fresh - it had even left a bruise of itself behind on the paper.

Mercedes resettled in her chair. She felt her limbs relaxing one by one as the long day crept up on her. _I'll look it up tomorrow,_ she thought, yawning, and folded it carefully away and tossed on her bedside table. Angling her arms behind her, she unbuckled the sheath from her belt and brought her knife to rest in her lap, casting a skeptical eye over at Annie. She showed no signs of stirring; the pale crescent of her face was turned out to the room, her hair almost silver where it veiled one eye. Mercedes could just about see that she was still breathing.

Gradually, Mercedes lulled herself into a light doze, periodically waking to see if Annie - the Female Titan - had moved. The shadows in the room clocked the moon's passage in the sky outside until it was out of view.

* * *

Ever so carefully, Annie risked opening her eyes. Directly across from her, Mercedes' head had fallen to one side in the pillow awkwardly stuffed behind her neck and head, her mouth slightly parted and the grip around her knife lax. She was asleep.

Annie's throat burned from being parched so long; her eyelids were heavy. The ride here had jostled her awake, but it had taken her a long while to understand that she was in the waking world rather than still in the long nightmare, and longer still to dredge up enough memories to pinpoint exactly who she was, who she was with, and who she missed. Everything felt fibrous and thin, like cobwebs between her fingers. She could barely move and it'd even taken her a while to understand that that in of itself was foreign to her.

 _I'm in a house. No longer in the crystal. I'm with Mercedes…_

Mercedes… Annie struggled to remember. Her eyes lazily blinked and refocused on the face across from her - cattish, like Hitch's; thick dark curls birdnesting on the pillow off her neck, the right side of her head shorn short; a thin pale scar reaching from her right ear toward her eye. The shadows made the muscles in her arms seem carved crudely out of clay - thicker than Annie remembered. She was out of uniform - the last time Annie remembered seeing her was at the disbanding ceremony. How long ago had that been? It was hard to know.

 _I'd asked her - she'd ranked third. I remember that. Bertholdt had ranked third. I had ranked fourth._ She blinked again. _I'd wanted to fight her. Why is she protecting me?_ She remembered the words she'd heard downstairs - how Mercedes had lied about who Annie was.

Annie tried moving her body again; she only just barely managed to lift her arm from her torso, lift her head, her ankle. Escape wasn't an option.

 _Where would I even go? How long have I been out? Where are Reiner and Bertholdt? We can't have won, surely, if Mercedes is protecting me? Are Eren and Armin nearby_

Everything ached. Her head, in particular, hurt, pulsing with a headache brought about by dehydration. Annie shut her eyes, groaning inwardly. Was it safer to still pretend to be unconscious, like she'd done on the way here?

"You can't fool me."

How long had it been since she'd heard a voice? The last one she remembered belonged to Eren in his Titan form - his scream. This was far gentler but still dangerous, like the riptide of a wild current under the smooth surface of a river. There was a crackle to it too, like fire - fire dancing over water - Annie felt the electricity of the image race along her spine the same way she felt when transforming and half-expected to tear apart the house now. She was almost disappointed when it didn't happen. A wispy laugh sputtered in her lungs without the strength to make it up her throat and out of her mouth. She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at her.

Mercedes drew back her legs from the trunk they'd been propped on and sat up, taking her knife in her hand - all in one smooth movement as though she'd been the one pretending to be asleep, or didn't know what sleep was. She leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees, the knife hanging comfortably carelessly in her fingers between her legs. Her hair slipped over the taut knots of her shoulders, framing her face that now appeared so much angrier, so much older, than Annie remembered. Maybe she'd been encased for years - maybe Mercedes was all that remained of the life Annie had known, however briefly and farcical that had been.

The two of them stared at each other for a few moments, and then Mercedes asked, "What broke your crystal?"

"Are you going to kill me?" Annie rasped, barely managing all the syllables.

Mercedes hesitated, then replied, "No."

"Where are the others?"

"Not here. It's just me and my squad."

Annie guessed by this level of honesty Mercedes was either hoping for some in return or figuring that it didn't matter whether she knew or not. "Why won't you kill me?" she asked, her voice cracking. Part of her wanted it. She felt like she'd never be whole again - she felt shame breaking her apart, letting the concept of failure force its way in. Anything but that.

Again Mercedes hesitated, watching her, reading her. Annie remembered that. She remembered how mad that had made everyone, and she remembered understanding why Mercedes did it. She remembered recognizing the need to become the hunter before one became the hunted; the need to gather as much information and trust as possible, as much to protect oneself as to fill a void not of one's choosing. Some things never changed.

"I think we can help one another. I also think we both need sleep. I promise not to kill you if you don't kill me." Again, the volunteering of truth for truth.

It was Annie's turn to hesitate. "I can't move much, so. Agreed. We can always -" she coughed, "- change our minds in the morning."

* * *

 **A Note from the Author:** Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who's reviewed already! It's very encouraging and I appreciate each one of you! Secondly, some contextual notes: I'm aware Jean's mother's first name isn't mentioned in the manga or anime (as of yet) - she seemed like an Emma to me, so that'll be a placeholder until we do find out what it is. Second - the 'Breach by Fire' references events in The Burning Titan.


	5. Chapter 4: Lynchpin

**Chapter 4: Lynchpin**

"You're dismissed, soldiers," said Commander Dawk.

The two Military Police - Dreyse and Feigenbaum, Gustav recalled - looked at one another and the Queen uncertainly before leaving the room and shutting the door behind them. Gustav waited for some kind of instruction; beside him, Anka shifted feet. They eyed Commander Pixis but he made no move to get up from the armchair he'd deposited himself in, half-asleep still by the fire. Everyone was tired and somewhat disheveled, having been woken in the middle of the night, apart from the Queen.

"Sorry to have troubled you, Commanders," the Queen said, her voice softening and her charm helped by a sweet smile. "But I'm sure you can understand the gravity of the situation." The firelight shone in her golden hair.

"Seems the plot was cause for concern after all," Dawk said, wiping at one eye tiredly. The same hand rose in the air, "And here I was, thinking that we'd ousted the culprits, only for them to turn out to be decoys."

"Carello did warn us about that possibility," Pixis hummed to himself, almost in satisfaction, and resettled in his seat.

"And now she's resigned," Dawk said. "Fat lot of good that does us."

"We'll work on it," Pixis said, jerking his head at Anka and Gustav, too.

"Commander Dawk," the Queen interrupted, kindly, "we'll find out who took the Female Titan as quickly as we can, and get her back. It need not reflect poorly on you or your team." She placed a hand on his arm, beginning to lead him toward the door to the study. "You have a new little one, don't you?"

"Just turned six months, yes," Dawk passed his hand down his face.

"And it's the middle of the night - no wonder you're tired. Please, rest for tonight if you can."

"Thank you, your Highness; I'll take a couple of hours and then begin investigations immediately."

Gustav watched the gaunt man leave and the Queen return through the shadows of the darkened study to the armchair opposite Pixis; she stood beside it, a hand holding onto one of the wings and her nails digging into the brown upholstery. She seemed pale, particularly small. She glanced at Anka and Gustav.

"Whatever you have to say to me, your Highness, you can say to them," Pixis said. "They aren't my Aides for nothing."

The Queen worried at her lip for a moment as she looked into the fire.

"What else did those two MPs tell you, before the rest of us arrived?" Pixis suggested.

Her face seemed to resettle and she returned her gaze to them, "Nothing other than what they reported to all of us. I just happened to be the first one they came across. I suppose," she paused, folding her arms and perching on the arm of the chair, "I suppose I'm just worried about what could happen if it turns out Annie Leonhardt is alive. It's a strange thing to think about. All the progress we've made..."

"It will not be undone."

In the pause that followed, Gustav realized that not only was the Queen attempting to divert their attention and lying, but that they all knew it. Something else had been said to the Queen that had not been said to the Commanders - further supported by the fact that the two MPs had sought out the Queen directly rather than following the normal incident-reporting hierarchy, and the fact that she'd been eager to send Commander Dawk, who was easily the point-person in this situation, away.

"Feigenbaum and Dreyse didn't appear to have sustained any injuries in the 'ambush' they reported - should we still treat them as suspects?" Anka broke the silence.

Though the Queen opened her mouth to speak, Pixis spoke for her, "No, I don't think that's necessary."

A glance at Anka told Gustav that this answer didn't satisfy her, but she didn't comment on it. She sighed almost imperceptibly and continued, "Anyone else we should start with? Are we sure the original suspects were all apprehended when Carello tracked them down? Maybe we should ask her -"

"I think we've bothered her enough," Pixis chuckled.

"But Sir, she may represent our best lead -"

"I said not to worry, Anka," he repeated firmly, a slight edge under the kindness. He pushed himself up from the armchair. "Well, if that's all for now, I say we get started on this in the morning. I don't think Miss Leonhardt is going to be running any marathons so soon out of her crystal. We can afford a little time. If you'll excuse me, your Highness."

Likewise Gustav then knew - as he was sure the others in the room knew - that it was absolutely Carello that they should be talking to. Why the Commander seemed to want to avoid that - much less _not_ talk to his Aides about it - was another question. He thought over the evidence of the last hour or two as he and Anka followed Pixis out of the study into one of the many palace halls.

"Sir," Anka began again, quietly. "Carello was here, at the palace, earlier today…"

"Paying her respects to the Queen, I'm sure - they did graduate together after all." Pixis countered quickly. He continued in a lower tone, "The last thing we need is to involve a _citizen_ in such a sensitive matter. And a Carello at that. I'm sure you can appreciate that they're nothing but bad luck. Please drop it, Rheinberger."

"Apologies, Sir."

 _Shit. Carello did it,_ Gustav suddenly realized. _It's the perfect double bluff - throw us a decoy with the Couriers, appear to wrap everything up with their arrest, and then barely a week later commit the actual crime once we're complacent. But Carello has no motive to kidnap Leonhardt and actively worked to thwart the plot, not to mention being the one to call it out as a mere distraction. So is it, in fact, a triple-bluff orchestrated by someone else, framing her in the process? And yet...she appears to have Leonhardt. But why? Carello can't be that twisted…_

Gustav remembered the way she'd ignored his warnings, down in that room below the river, and slaughtered the two leaders of the Couriers. She'd shot one down like an animal, and torn into the other like an animal herself. He remembered the haunted look to her face after reinforcements had arrived and how it hadn't lifted - rather, worsened - when she came back with Brzenska. How she'd given her resignation as though it was the most logical thing anyone could imagine.

It was possible, he presumed, that she really was off-kilter and behind all of this, but if that were the case then it didn't match with the way Pixis seemed to be protecting her. It also didn't match what he'd seen of her military career the past two to three years or of her personal conduct in what limited interactions they'd had before the Burning Titan's arrival. He would have liked to say that he saw what Pixis could see: despite the baggage she came with due to her family, despite the overbearing sense of self-righteousness in which she seemed to conduct herself, and despite her youth, she had a talent for strategy alongside her combat skills and commanded the same loyalty she showed to the greater good. He would have liked to say that she had a promising future - one that he wanted to see play out alongside his own - as long as it wasn't crippled by whatever it was that seemed to have hollowed her out.

The way she'd smiled at him and laughed, back when the Burning Titan had first appeared and he'd asked if she and her squad could handle that first reconnaissance mission alone...the blood from the throat of the Couriers' voice splashing her face - the light in her eyes had been the same for both. _She can't be twisted, surely. Only damaged._

"Are you even listening to me?"

Gustav refocused, glanced at Anka walking beside him. "Sorry, caught up in my thoughts."

"Who is it this time? Marta Phillipe? You've been 'caught up in your thoughts' ever since you got back from that Courier bust," Anka grumbled. "I still don't know how you got there before me. You said you were at your parents, huh?"

Gustav had forgotten that Anka didn't know about his undercover work. He'd been surprised to discover that she didn't seem to be in possession of a medal from Pixis, as he and Mercedes were. "I was. It doesn't take as long as you think to ride that way," he shrugged and hoped it sufficed; Anka was getting more and more scathingly inquisitive, lately, as though she had been made suspicious of everything. She hadn't been like this a year ago.

She sighed, loudly, and rolled her eyes. "How long have we been working together? If you were at a girl's just tell me, I don't care. Look, I'll see what I can find out in the neighborhood around the site of the disappearance - you look like you're still in dreamland so why don't you go back to bed."

He tried to veil the genuine concern about the comment with a laugh, "And let you one-up me and take all the credit when you find something out? No way."

"Children, please," Pixis called over his shoulder. "I hope you can stop competing for my affection long enough for one of you to get me some scotch."

* * *

Mercedes craned her neck past her armoire door when she heard the _thud_ ; she smirked when she saw that Annie had fallen out of bed and laid there coughing.

"Good morning," Mercedes said sardonically and finished tugging one of her ubiquitous tank tops over her head and body. She then wrapped a skirt around her waist and knotted its ties at her waist until she could find clean shorts or pants, and closed the armoire. Annie was struggling to sit up against the bed, her eyes barely open; she was as pale as the dawn outside. "Hope you weren't planning on going anywhere," Mercedes added as she walked over.

"How long was I crystallized?" Annie asked weakly. She coughed some more, prompting Mercedes to begrudgingly hand over the glass of water she'd got for herself earlier.

"Let's see," Mercedes thought back. "A couple of years now, must be. I'd transferred back from the Scouting Legion but didn't have my squad yet." She leant on the nightstand and stared down at her, "Does it matter?"

Annie was quiet, and took careful sips of the water until she'd drunk it all. She set the glass beside her on the floor and leaned her head back on the bed, exposing her white throat.

"Debating whether to kill me, or transform?" Mercedes asked.

"What good would that do?" Annie said to the ceiling.

There was another pause, and then Mercedes repeated her question from the night before, "What broke your crystal?" Really, the science portion of her brain wanted to spend all morning quizzing Annie on the particulars of the encasement and how she managed to survive, but there would have to be time for that later.

"I don't know. What makes you so sure I'd tell you even if I knew?" Finally her head rolled forward and she fixed her piercing blue gaze on Mercedes, "What are you, now?"

Oddly, the question's phrasing made Mercedes uncomfortable and she did not answer it immediately. She knew it not only to be referring to something obvious, like rank or affiliation, but something far more insidious. Not to mention sometimes she wasn't sure what side she was on or even what she was anymore. "You mean am I one of you, because of my father," she smiled wryly to herself, shifting feet until she leaned back on the nightstand.

"Your father?"

"Known as Two Swords." She saw the faint recognition in Annie's face and the kernel of bitterness she still felt toward him grew a little heavier; she kept talking to distract herself from this. "He tried, and failed. I'm not one of you, but I don't need to be. And no, I'm no longer in the military."

"You've gone rogue," Annie sighed and looked away at the door as though in disappointment.

"No. I didn't intend to be saddled with you but now you're here, as I said last night I think we can help one another and it so happens that neither of us has very much time."

"Why should I help you?" Annie managed a huff of laughter and a shrug. She attempted to get up again but didn't get more than an inch off the ground.

Mercedes moistened her lips and folded her arms as she came away from the desk. "They're going to come after you, and it won't take them long to find their way here. I'm pretty popular lately. I can protect you from them if you help me get to Shiganshina, which is where I'll be leaving for today."

Again, Annie fixed her with an unblinking stare. "Why do you want to go there?" her voice was almost accusatory. "You'd seriously dare bring me there by yourself?"

Mercedes smiled in amusement. "It's not much of a dare - I don't think I need anyone else. As for why I'm going…" her amusement faded, replaced by the nagging urgency and the faint taste of a burgeoning dread, like blood, on her tongue. "It's important. I need to find someone. That's all you need to know but trust me, I think our interests will align." She didn't want to give Annie too much information until not only was she sure of it herself, but until she was sure of Annie. When Annie didn't answer right away, Mercedes shrugged, "I could always kill you now if you don't agree, and turn your corpse over to the authorities claiming you were trying to escape."

"You'd hang for it," Annie said in a deadpan voice. "You'd have killed a conspirator and a witness."

"Ironically, done that already with the ringleaders of some other people who were supposedly plotting to kidnap you. What's more blood on my hands?"

"And you'd risk that? Whatever's at Shiganshina, it's worth more?"

"Yes."

Annie paused, but did not look away. "He's probably dead you know."

The taste of blood in Mercedes' mouth grew more potent, saltier. She realized she'd actually bitten the inside of her lip at the comment. "Well there's only one way for you and I to find out if those we care about are safe, isn't there?"

Annie looked away, then. She brought her knees up to her chest and tenderly wrapped her arms around them. "Who says I care about anyone?"

"Why else choose to crystallize rather than kill yourself or let yourself _be_ killed, unless there was something worth living for?" Mercedes retorted. She reveled in the quiet that followed, and paced a little. Through the window she could see that the dawn was growing from a pale turquoise to a faintest thread of gold over the rooftops; it wouldn't be long before day broke. "As I said: we keep each other safe, and we get out of here. We find the answers both of us want, and maybe a bit of redemption in the process."

"You're making a lot of assumptions about what I want," Annie said. "Redemption, for example. There's no redemption for me and from the sounds of things, there's none for you either."

"A little bit of our humanity, then," Mercedes said, rolling her shoulders and cracking her neck. She returned to Annie, crouched in front of her, and held out a hand, "Do we have terms?"

After a moment, Annie took it. "For now."


	6. Chapter 5: Listening at Doors, I

**Chapter 5: Listening at Doors, I**

Baena gently lifted her fingertips and the side of her face away from the bedroom door, her mouth parted. She held her breath; it seemed strange that the conversation she'd just listened to would suddenly fall silent. Worse still was the rigidity in her limbs caused by the _content_ of that conversation.

 _To Shiganshina...and she doesn't need us? And that's...the Female Titan...it's Annie…_ All joy felt sapped from her.

The door was flung open; startled, Baena jerked backward. The suspicion with which Mercedes' face had greeted her quickly softened, but Baena's own intensified when she looked over the shorter girl's shoulder and saw the paler girl on the floor.

 _It's her._

"Baena, what're you doing out here?" Mercedes said, bringing her eyes back to her friend.

"I just came to see if you were awake, if you wanted to go for a run…" Baena said softly and trailed off.

Mercedes didn't quite smile at her but she did seem to garner a little more sympathy, and tugged Baena out of the corridor into the bedroom. When the door shut behind them Baena felt conversely as though her reserve had been opened. "What the hell is going on, 'Cee?" she hissed, dancing a little in the small space to keep well away from Annie. She gritted her teeth and passed her eyes rapidly back and forth between her friend and the Titan-shifter, "You're aware you have a fucking Titan-shifter - and Annie, at that - in your bedroom?!"

Mercedes placed a hand on her shoulder. "Yes, I'm aware, calm down."

"And what's this shit about going to Shiganshina? By yourself? Did you hit your head while you were gone?" Baena's voice tried to rise.

"Ssh. Please. I wanted to explain it to the three of you together, in private."

"Then what's she doing here?" Baena jabbed a finger at Annie. "She's meant to be in her fucking crystal way underground where she can't endanger anybody!"

"We made a deal, whoever you are," said Annie. With difficulty she managed to pull herself up to sit on the bed itself. "I'm not here by choice but I'm not here to cause trouble."

"And why in the world should I listen to what you say?"

"Because it's what I was going to say," Mercedes said calmly. She and Baena stared at one another for a moment. "Please."

Baena began shaking her head, tugging her lips inside her mouth. Her heartrate felt like a rabbit's. "I can't - I just can't. I can't talk to you like this. Come on, we're waking Fhalz up. He gets you better than I do," she admitted lowly, stung. She took Mercedes by the arm and opened the door again. "You stay here," she spat back at Annie as they left.

Baena tried not to grip Mercedes' arm too hard. She tried not to think about poor Ms Julia still sleeping in the room they passed, or the possibility of Annie using the opportunity to escape while left alone. She tried not to think about how inevitable everything Mercedes decided was, and accordingly, the prospect of her making yet another suicidal run to yet another Wall. She needed Fhalz or Oliver to take over the conversation before anger and hurt took over _her_. Her empty right eyesocket ached.

She pulled Mercedes after her into the left-hand bedroom that had originally been set up for Mercedes' parents, that they had helped her move into only a few days ago upon her resignation. A breeze was blowing through the paneless window they'd unbricked, which dominated the far wall. Dawn was upon them but unlike usual Baena found no energy or happiness in it. While she and Oliver had placed futons for themselves on the floor, on account of his leg Fhalz had taken the bed; the two of them stirred at Baena's heavy footsteps and her less than gentle closing of the door behind them.

"Here," Baena growled, jerking her grip away from Mercedes, "We're all here. Explain."

"What's going on?" Oliver yawned as he sat up.

"You'll need to trust me," said Mercedes.

Baena felt herself shaking again, and began murmuring, "It's too much, 'Cee, it's too much." Not a moment later she felt Fhalz's hand find her own and pull her down to sit on the bed beside him.

"What's too much?" Oliver's face had grown worried.

Mercedes stood at the foot of the bed so she could see all of them, and folded her arms - oddly, it gave Baena some comfort because by the set of her shoulders, it wasn't her usual confident, 'decision-made' stance. Her voice was quiet and held a small plea, "Please trust me, and let me be the one to tell Granna." She paused, breathing deeply. "I have Annie Leonhardt next door -"

"The Female Titan," Baena interrupted before she could stop herself.

"What?" Fhalz gasped. His grip tightened around Baena's hand and she gripped it tightly back - his anger could get much louder and bull-headed than hers, even if he was more likely than her to see through it and quickly.

"Yes, the Female Titan. I went to check out her crystal again and it'd fallen apart - we don't know how," she added when Fhalz made to speak again, "and a friend of hers begged me to take her and keep her safe. I happen to agree that I don't trust to leave her in the hands of the current establishment and yes, I know that shouldn't be my decision to make, but…"

Baena felt Fhalz's grip relax; she glanced at him - he was searching Mercedes' face desperately, his own still pale from tiredness caused by the strain of the past few days and the nightmarish memories relived in the past few nights. When he spoke his voice also held a small plea, like Mercedes'. "But you have a good reason."

Mercedes nodded. "Yes." Her face grew sad, and like every time Baena saw sadness on Mercedes' face she reached out to her and held her hand too, anger and incredulity placed aside. "Don't say anything, but: I need to go to the Wall. I told the Queen I would. We think something happened to the Scouting Legion and we need to find out what. Annie's going with me."

"But why does it have to be you? Why does it _always_ have to be you?" Baena whispered. She felt her eyes watering and resented it.

Mercedes turned to her, frowning. "The Queen can't spare any more forces and I've called in too many favors. I've been cut loose so I'm of little consequence to anyone -"

"Don't say that," Baena growled.

"You know what I mean," Mercedes countered quickly. "I can make the run. The Queen trusts me when she doesn't trust most people right now. And someone has to go - if something were to happen to the Scouting Legion then -"

"The fragile new regime would suffer a blow," Fhalz finished for her. "It might even collapse. The Scouting Legion put her on the throne, rightful a move though that may have been, and whoever is truly still pulling strings against her would get the upper hand if they learned the Legion had been wiped out. She can't afford to show weakness."

Mercedes nodded.

"But you keep talking about going alone," Baena said, releasing Mercedes' hand and bringing her own to scratch furiously at the scalp at the back of her head. "You can't possibly think that's a good idea. Please. There has to be some kind of force they can muster if there's really a problem or hell just take us if -"

"We're no good, Baena," Fhalz snapped.

Baena hesitated in disbelief, and then gathered her wits. "No we're not, don't be stupid -"

"I have a broken leg and wrist and my ribs haven't healed," Fhalz continued, his voice sad, final, "and you haven't adjusted to losing your eye - neither of us can use our gear right now. We'd be dead weight and you know it."

She felt just as crushed now as she'd felt as a child when, stricken late with pox, her father had enlightened her to the fact that she couldn't, in fact, play like she had when she was well. He'd let her fall out of bed to prove his point when she wouldn't listen; she felt that same sudden drop, only this time she hadn't moved a muscle.

 _"We're no good,"_ her skull chanted at her. It was nearly impossible to digest the thought; they were four limbs of the same body. When would they ever not be? _Now, apparently._ But how? It'd be like learning to walk again. And all she could utter as she looked at the floor was, "This wasn't how it was supposed to be."

Mercedes came into her line of sight as she knelt in front of her. Baena dragged her eyes up to meet hers. Her friend's face was one of regret and humility - emotions she hadn't seen on her in some time and as a result, jarring. Her hands folded over Baena's. "You know I'll be all right, don't you?" Mercedes said softly.

"That's not the point," Baena said, tipping her head to one side. "But yes, I know." Her voice dropped to a whisper, "You'll be all right without us." As soon as the words were out of her mouth tears began to well up; she pulled a hand free to press it to her aching eyesocket that hadn't yet forgotten how to cry.

Although Mercedes clambered onto the bed beside her and embraced her, it was Oliver that spoke. "Come on, Bae'. You're making this sound awful. It's really not. The Boss is looking after us like always - business as usual. We'll be back before you know it."

Incredulity bubbled in Baena's chest and made her spine grow rigid, perking her up. "Well forgive me if I don't want her - wait. You said 'we'll'," she narrowed her eyes at Oliver, who was looking suspiciously chipper.

He shrugged and propped his elbows on his upraised knees, lacing his large fingers and pressing the insides of his feet together.

Mercedes' attention was diverted and her grip loosened around Baena. She began gently, "Ol -"

"No, Boss," Oliver shook his head once. "Fhalz and Baena aren't well enough to go, that's true, but I am. I'll go with you."

Mercedes' eyebrows pinched and rose, "You'd be abandoning your post."

"Doesn't matter. You can't go all the way to Wall Maria with the Female Titan by yourself. No." When she started to object again he cut her off, "I'm not asking permission."

"Can't you see I want you all to stay here where it's safe, away from me?" Mercedes burst.

"We get it, all right?" Fhalz burst back, making Baena jump in her skin. The three of them turned to him. "We get it. You're never going to fully abandon your tendency to protect us. It's the same reason you're going to find Jean, and the rest of the Legion. In fact, it's the same reason you didn't kill Annie when you found her, I suspect. It's what makes you, you, and it's why we love you - you're loyal to those you care about to a fault. It's pointless for us to argue or try to change that." When Baena made to interject Fhalz held up a hand, "No. Don't. 'Cee made me Squad Leader when she resigned so fuck it, all of you asked for it, I'll be a Squad Leader." He nodded at each of them in turn, "Baena, you and I are staying and recouping - we need to focus on defending Oliver's absence to the brass and avoiding the truth. Ol', you're going with 'Cee. I trust you've thought about your decision enough that it's worth it?"

"Always. We've played enough chess," Oliver said.

"That we have." Fhalz leaned back on his good wrist. "There's a condition, though, 'Cee."

Intrigued, Baena looked between the two of them either side of her and, as she had many times over the past couple of years, was suddenly reminded that they had been together longer than they'd been with her and Oliver. It wasn't a threatening or intimidating feeling, but sometimes she envied it, and all the time she was made aware that conversations like this mostly took place behind a wall of glass; Fhalz and Mercedes had learned to speak far more deliberately for Oliver and Baena's benefit in order to try to break down that wall but somehow, that effort made their words take on a kind of artifice. Baena always felt a faint guilt for what she felt to be her and Oliver's unintentional and unavoidable intrusion.

"Condition?"

"If we let you go, you get yourself and Oliver back in one piece. Even if you have to leave everyone else behind. If we lose the Scouting Legion it'll be difficult for us to rebuild our lives, but if we lose you both it'll be impossible."

After a slight hesitation, Mercedes said, "I think you're underestimating your ability to keep going." Baena could hear the smile in her voice but even if she'd been deaf, by the way Fhalz's eyes sparkled she could tell it was there.

"And I think you're underestimating how much we care," Fhalz said. "So do you agree?"

Baena looked at her expectantly, biting her lip.

"How can I not?"

"Then it's settled." He paused. "We were never going to be like other Squads; that hasn't changed, even with your resignation, 'Cee. We're like four limbs of one body, sure, but I think that's a bit limiting. We have more endurance and fluidity than that. Distance can't break us any more than it can break light."

Baena found herself smiling at him; Fhalz always made things make sense. She found his hand again and held it.

Oliver had stood, and walked over to the bed. "Right as always," he said.

"Thanks, guys," Mercedes said, her voice warm at Baena's back. "I owe you."

"How about we start the day off right, then, and get you prepared to leave?" Fhalz said. He grunted a bit as he began to shift. "Someone help me up."


	7. Chapter 6: Listening at Doors, II

**Chapter 6: Listening At Doors, II**

Julia blinked at the door - the door that had been locked for so many years while she waited for her grown children to come home, that now barred her from her new children. She didn't know what to do with the information she'd overheard and in particular, didn't know what to do with the fact that - more and more lately - younger people had information and she did not.

Julia felt old, and inept. Something she'd never felt, not even when her hip had been ruined and her unborn daughter lost, not even the morning of her seventieth birthday. The ride back from the ranch in the wake of the Burning Titan had worn her down more than she liked to admit and she felt it now more than ever. It felt so obvious to everyone around her that it was almost shameful. The struggle to regain some of her former fire, her pride, to beat back the notion that she was at last dying, gave her a sense of panic and desperation. She wanted to seize everything she could.

Her hand floated down to the door handle but before she could turn it, it opened. She and Mercedes looked up at one another at the same time and for a split second, Julia thought the door had been replaced by a mirror.

 _Why won't she stay? Why do they always have to leave?_ Julia thought.

"Really? You, listening at a door?" one corner of Mercedes' mouth drew up. The three behind her barely stopped their eyes from widening and jaws from dropping.

Julia rapidly replaced her sentimentality. "What, do you think your generation invented it?"

The five of them stood staring at one another for a few awkward moments. Baena - bless her - even tried to prompt them into movement with a pleasant, "Good morning, Ms Julia - you're up early!"

"I suppose I am," Julia said. Speaking of it reminded her that she'd barely slept at all; her shoulders slumped as the weight of all the other nights' sleepless hours pressed down on her. The anger she'd felt at Mercedes last night had burned down to a smouldering coal but if what she'd heard was true, she wanted even that to be extinguished before Mercedes left.

Oliver clapped his hands together, startling them. "I'll make some of my mom's oatmeal, how about that?" he smiled.

"I think we all need that," Julia agreed. "You three go down. I need to talk to my granddaughter." At her last sentence Mercedes' eyes were drawn back to hers from where they'd been looking compulsively at her old bedroom door, where presumably her blonde friend from the night before still slept. Julia turned on her heel and went back into her own bedroom.

The roughly-north-facing window above her bed directly opposite the door barely let in any light, and the heavy curtains on the right-hand, eastern window remained drawn shut. But, being the sort more comfortable in darkness - and adamant that it wasn't harming her eyes when Mercedes protested - neither did she light her oil lamp or unshutter the box lantern containing the glowing shards from the Reiss Chapel cavern that she'd been commissioned to work on. Come to think of it, though, this was perhaps a conversation better-suited for shadows.

Julia sat on the bed and when Mercedes ventured in behind her, she gestured a finger for her to close the door and she did so. Mercedes took a few slow steps to Julia's side of the bed, casually reaching up an arm to stroke aside first one curtain, then another. The room was filled with a shade of rose like a strawberry wine. Julia croaked and swatted at it out of habit - she didn't want anything to be pretty, or even pleasant, right now - but she had to admit that it was, and that it was good for her.

 _After all, who knows how long I have to see the sun,_ she thought wryly, wanted to say. Instead, she said, "Did I say I wanted those open?"

"What did you hear?" Mercedes asked instead of responding to her.

Julia hesitated. She brought her loose hair over her shoulder and began to braid it. "You're leaving again - for the Wall, maybe farther. The Scouting Legion's missing. Oliver's going with you."

"Is that it?"

"That's enough," Julia said, but had to admit her curiosity was piqued over what she may have missed.

"I don't get why you're suddenly so attached to me staying here," Mercedes said and wandered to the window, glancing out of it at Klorva. Their home, Julia reminded herself, and it made her granddaughter's words seem even more absurd. "You _lived_ outside of the farthest one, and then you supported me joining the military. Uncle Joaquin was a Scout."

"You chose the _Garrison_ not the Scouting Legion," Julia reminded her irritably. The smouldering coal in her heart made of last night's anger was beginning to warm up again.

"I transferred to the Scouting Legion; I would have happily stayed had the Commander not had other plans," Mercedes reminded her just as irritably, her hand pressed against the windowsill.

"And you would have died out there," Julia nearly shouted. Her fingers released her braid. "You could have died when that poor misguided boy took you, too."

"But I didn't."

"Am I wrong to want to avoid the same thing happening again?"

Mercedes' voice was stern. "I'm not being taken - I'm going of my own accord."

"Are you sure you're not confusing 'your own accord' with Erwin's?" Julia said lowly.

"I know what you're implying - we agreed never to bring up what I told you ever again." She did not look at Julia.

Julia bit back on a retort as the memory of those tense, human two weeks resurfaced. She allowed Mercedes that concession, and tried a different tactic. "You're no longer military and it's no longer your concern, Queen's request or not. You need to be here, with me, where it's safe."

At last Mercedes looked away from the window; she turned her back to it and her fists clenched. "Uncle Joaquin didn't die outside the Walls. Neither did Grandfather, or your other sons - _they all died in here_!"

Julia surged to her feet, "Well your father died out there - by your hand - and part of you died with him when you made that shot." The merest thought of both those things made Julia's lip tremble and she turned her face away, staring at her journal on her nightstand and the unfinished glass of water. There wasn't enough water in it to quench the sparks biting at her ribcage, to drown the knowledge that the only child she had left was slipping away from her - that Darius Zackly had sunk his teeth into yet another. What had they talked about? What had he told her and what of it had she heard? What had she told him, or done, in reply? Julia dreaded to think.

After a long moment of silence, Julia looked up, and was shocked to see how upset her granddaughter looked; Mercedes swallowed and looked away, and the light shone in her tears. "He isn't dead, I don't think."

Julia gathered herself. She recognized how alike the two of them were, and reminded herself that Mercedes needed forgiveness and information more than she needed anger that matched her own. They wouldn't get anywhere spewing venom at one another - and she couldn't let them part on a bad note. Too often had she parted ways with those she loved on a bad note, only to have it be too late to make amends…

How had their lives come to this, she wondered? She glanced around the little room, remembered her old one in the House of Heaven, and suddenly, vehemently, didn't want to die here. She didn't want to be ground into dirt - something Zackly had tried so hard to do to them over the years and had so nearly succeeded - and she didn't want her history to be repeated with her granddaughter. As much as she wanted to keep Mercedes here and protect her, she wanted her to regain the glory they'd lost - have sons and daughters of her own that didn't live in any kind of shadow and who didn't need to sign their name in blood in order to be remembered. Her sons hadn't had that luxury; she and her husband hadn't had that luxury. It was heartbreaking to feel that all she had to offer the next generation was a hand-me-down skirt mended and wrapped around a slenderer waist, a prototype rifle, a bangle, the smell of plums and the fire under the skin. Everything else was ashes and dust.

"It's easier to think of him as dead. I'm sorry." Julia looked at the rug; it was too much effort for her to explain why it was easier and, perhaps, one of the few things she kept private. The only thoughts that would come to mind were of her sons just as they were. She felt her mind and her tongue drifting. "I had five sons - five beautiful, good sons... Valentin, my gallant one; Joaquin, my talented one; Alejandro, my spirited one; Rafael, my devoted one; Leon, my wayward one. How I loved them, and their father too, of whom they were all facets. My good, brave sons. All betrayed. All gone in the dust."

"Well you have me, now, Granna. Just me. You've always had me," Mercedes said through gritted teeth and the trembling curtains of her hair, her face indignant and angry. Her pain was Julia's - more, Julia knew, than Mercedes would ever know - and she was sorry for it. "So don't just _let_ me go. Arm me. _Send_ me. Let this be the turning of the tide."

Julia's hands reached out, grasped, and slid a small ways down Mercedes' unyielding bare arms. "You've always been the turning of the tide, my love, no matter how much I wished otherwise. When you asked for pennyroyal, it changed how I thought about our future. I thought now you were home, things would be different - it could be the two of us again, in peace." She watched Mercedes contemplate how to object and in that instance, saw all of her sons - all of their virtues and flaws - in one body. "Look at you. Your flesh can barely contain your fate." She shook her head, regained her train of thought. "Things were never going to be how I imagined. But you know why I imagined them, don't you?"

Mercedes blinked at her.

"The day will come when you'll leave, and I'll be gone before you get back. It may be a journey that lasts a month, it may be only a day or a few minutes. I'm not saying this to make you guilty or to frighten you, but because we both need to stop pretending I'll live forever. You're right - you're going to leave, and I'm not going to prevent you."

"No?"

Julia shook her head. She patted Mercedes' arms and released her, wandering back to the bed. She was suddenly tired again and sat down heavily. She wasn't sure why, but she was surprised when Mercedes sat beside her and took her hands in hers. Julia stared at them - the frailty and crookedness of her own, her wedding band sealed on its finger forever by a swollen joint, and Mercedes' strong-boned, slightly longer ones with their faint scars from split knuckles and the callouses from maneuvering gear blades, rifles, and riding. She had her mother's hands, she suddenly realized. It'd never been obvious until now.

"And _you_ know why I'm leaving, don't you, Granna?"

"I do, but do you, really?" Julia remarked. When the younger woman seemed confused, Julia leaned forward and pressed her forehead to hers. She closed her eyes and sighed bittersweetly. "Because you are my sons and my daughter, given back to me all in one. Because you are my granddaughter." She quirked a smile and leaned away. "On a less melodramatic note, you're going out of duty and love - exactly the things I would expect." Another pause, in which the prior tension in the room seemed to finally dissipate into something warm and familial again. The two of them stared at the rosy window. "I'm glad you still love him," she said carefully, remembering the fight that had occurred. She didn't bring it up - nor did she bring up several of the things that had happened after, including that which might throw her prior words into question.

Mercedes' voice became atypically soft, uncertain. "I think I do, at any rate. I got a letter from him - though Armin had to send it for him - and all it said was 'I love you'. I think people use those words too soon and too easily, sometimes. I'm sure we're still angry at one another and we have a lot to talk about, but...I don't want to miss that chance, if it is love."

Julia suddenly reflected that they'd never really talked about such things before - not in any kind of affectionate, womanly way at any rate - even when she was left to try to comfort her when Jean had departed and she had thrown herself into work and exercise. She'd certainly never talked about anything of the sort with her sons. As a result, her own memories of falling in love with Esteban took a little longer to articulate themselves and resolve into wisdom, but at length she said, "Love is the conquering of fear, and it is a battle fought every day over kingdoms great and small and on all types of terrain. Jean left out of fear and you will pursue out of fear. I don't think you were ready to conquer before - I think you thought it love when it was just fire and want - but maybe if you find one another, truly find one another, maybe in a few days at the Wall or years from now on either of your deathbeds, you'll conquer your fear."

"I hope so," Mercedes said quietly, but did not elaborate. Julia hoped she was digesting the sentiment.

When it didn't seem as though anything more was going to be said, Julia breathed in deep and readied herself for yet another difficult day ahead. She moved to stand, but Mercedes stopped her with a hand on her wrist. Julia relaxed again and waited, watching her granddaughter's face change from wistfulness into something sterner and more thoughtful. She didn't let go of her wrist.

"I'm sorry I went to Zackly without you knowing," she said, "but promise me you'll pretend as though you don't know. I can't tell you what we discussed - you may come to harm if he finds out."

Julia huffed. "What's an old man really going to do to an old woman? I'm dying anyway, which is what he wants."

Mercedes shook her head and opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it.

Similarly, Julia tried to start keeping that promise and didn't prompt her. Instead, she said carefully, "Do not let him puppet you, like he attempted to puppet us."

Mercedes caught her eye, wary.

Julia swallowed, bidding Mercedes not to ask. She could almost hear her nightmares behind a door in head, almost see the memories she'd fought hard to beat down every night and in the process, feel like she was beating her own children.

But Mercedes as always plunged on, for good and bad. "I remember some of what Erwin said. He told the crowd that they - my uncles, Papa - were murdered. You've never told me what happened. But most of all, I still don't see why. Or more appropriately, why _us_. Why does he hate _us_ so much?"

"Because we saw him for what he was long before anyone else did, and we wounded him long before anyone else could," Julia said. There'd been no need to hesitate - after decades of rationalizing what had been done to her family, the words were terribly easy to summon. She'd been waiting to say them ever since Mercedes was born, she realized. "My husband was tortured to death and his body tied to his horse and sent back to me; Alejandro and Valentin were stripped of their gear and thrown off Wall Maria; Rafael's throat was slit; Joaquin was drowned; your father...was poisoned, and in his sickness killed your mother; he was sent to you to spread that poison. All because," here Julia swallowed again, her throat tightening, "your grandfather's sister, your namesake, Mercé Carello, rejected him."

A heavy silence fell. Julia risked a glance at Mercedes, whose face had contorted with a revulsion that while not unexpected or unwelcome, seemed a little out of proportion with what she had been told. Julia looked away.

"They were engaged," Julia said. "Then she saw him for what he was - we all did - and broke it off. A few years later we received a letter from her expressing concern over his interest in 'my cleverest one' - your father. She disappeared shortly thereafter and we never saw her again." Her voice dropped to a whisper, "Would you believe it if I said we were all friends, once? That we were all as happy as anyone could be in a cage? I suppose it was like being in a walled garden..." At length, the images, the memories, faded, and Julia laughed once, sardonically. "It feels like I'm telling you about a myth. About Babylon."

Mercedes' face was stern, now, when Julia looked at it. The fierce morning light had turned her eyes into ingots of amber. Julia felt grimly satisfied - she felt like her younger, furious self had stepped out of this decrepit, body and was waiting for something. Julia reached out to her reflection and turned the luminous profile by the jaw to look at her.

"You ask me to arm you, and send you," Julia reminded them both, and nodded to herself. "I will send you," she took a breath -

"After a good breakfast," Mercedes supplied, and smirked like her father - as if she'd reached into Julia's head and plucked the memory from it, quoting it entire.

Julia grinned a vicious grin, this time, and her reflection grinned back. "After a good breakfast," she agreed, and stood. "We'll feast on the bitter seeds we've been handed, and grow stronger."


	8. Chapter 7: Reconnaissance

**Chapter 7: Reconnaissance**

Gustav turned the page of the morning's newspaper and reached for his coffee. It was one of the few parts of the day that was quiet and orderly and he relished every minute of it. Most days out of the week he and Anka would meet before their time with Pixis began, and have a small breakfast and coffee, enjoying the other's silent company. Since Pixis never paid much attention to the _Berg_ , as well as reading it to summarize anything potentially significant Gustav also read it for his own enjoyment, in much the same fashion as his father.

He finished off the last of his coffee and leaned forward again to set the cup back on its saucer, scanning the small headline of an article farther back in the paper: _Notorious Warden Finally Forgoes Military Career_.

 _I wonder how that leaked so quickly - though I guess we should be grateful it's not blown out of proportion enough to make the front page…_ he thought.

"Anything interesting?" Anka asked, and he looked up from the first line of the article to see her refilling his cup and then her own from the steel pot.

Only the briefest of hesitations, and then a quick, "Not really. Thank you," he nodded at his cup and took it up again. "They seem to have kept the Female Titan's disappearance under wraps - for now."

As he sipped he reflected that he wasn't sure why he didn't tell her about the article concerning Carello, or indeed, bring up anything about her to Anka. He couldn't yet pinpoint its source, but ever since the audience with the Queen following the news of Leonhardt's disappearance he'd felt as though something was off about Anka. Part of it could have been the unavoidable and unfamiliar separation of duties they'd undergone for the past few months due to his undercover work, but now there seemed to be something else that was putting up a wall between them. She was being taken away for other duties, too, and he had no clue what they could be or even if they were for Pixis, as his were. The friendly competition that'd been present ever since they'd both become Aides seemed to be souring and he had no idea why.

Gustav examined her over the paper, this new idea suddenly more important than what the paper said about Carello. He watched Anka tuck her chestnut hair behind her ears as she leaned over her breakfast plate, as she always did, before delicately tearing the croissant it bore. She held shreds of it in her tiny hands and tucked them one at a time into her mouth like a shy little girl, though he knew the exact opposite to be true of her. They'd known each other for years, worked together almost as long. They were friends, to all intents and purposes, and he didn't presume it too much to say that they knew each other better than most. He wasn't comfortable thinking of them as being at cross-purposes. It didn't seem fair.

"Anka…" he began, unusually uncertain of how to speak to her. She glanced up at him curiously and he folded the paper haphazardly closed, set it and his coffee down.

"What?" She pushed another piece of pastry into her mouth and rubbed her fingers together, dusting the plate with golden flakes.

"Have you been assigned to…" he waved his hand, looked out the window beside their little table, and then back at her. She'd sat up, her expression mirroring his and her croissant forgotten.

"Other duties different from yours?" she supplied, but he detected the curiosity and hesitancy under her usual confidence. He noted, too, that she didn't continue and answer his unspoken question like she normally did.

Gustav suddenly felt the medal Pixis had given him burning in his breast pocket. "Were you given anything?" he risked.

Unexpectedly, this admission seemed to make her more comfortable; she resettled in her chair and her eyes narrowed in a sort of satisfied smile. It was a step closer to clarity. She leaned forward a little. "I'm guessing you're asking me because you were given something, too."

This made him feel better. He gave a small smile back; simultaneously they fished into their breast pocket and it seemed like both of their moods were lifting. He even felt a little excited for them both to be on the same page again, like they should be.

And then the medals clapped on the stained oak. They stared at them; their expressions fell. In contrast to the white ribbon with the embroidered rose and the bronze medallion with its wreath of thorns, Anka's was ribbonless, the polished gold and its embossed laurel wreath more than enough.

"I thought you were referring to Pixis," Gustav murmured, recollecting who it was that typically used the laurel in their heraldry. He knew he shouldn't have been surprised that there were others that performed covert operations - somehow, though, he'd hoped otherwise and moreover, that it wouldn't have emerged so close.

"And I thought you were referring to Zackly," Anka replied, and he was distantly appreciative that whatever remained of their friendship had encouraged her admitting that name.

After a moment of regretful silence, they reached forward and retrieved their medals, slowly putting them away. He knew that their relationship was changed forever, likely irrevocably.

Gustav gave a huff of sardonic laughter, and smiled sadly. "' _Sub rosa, spina_ '," he quoted. "'Under the rose, a thorn'."

"' _Sub arbore, ascia_ '," she quoted back, and he didn't have to ask to know that that was what was written on the back of hers in the same fashion as his own. "Under the tree, an axe'."

Another pause, and he felt compelled to ask, "How long?"

"As long as you," she admitted quietly. "We each wanted an edge over the other, didn't we," the way she said it wasn't a question, rather a reminder of a fact. He saw her shrug, "Maybe it was always going to end like this."

"What happened? What did I do to you?"

Anka quirked a brief, pitying smile, "You never did anything. And besides, we both know this is just business. It was always going to be business. I don't like the road Pixis is heading down, so can you blame me for making the best move for my career? If you were smart you'd do the same thing."

Gustav couldn't look at her; instead he fixed his gaze on his coffee growing cold. "I guess this is where our roads finally diverge. I thought we were going to see the end of the war together."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I," he said, and meant it like he knew she meant it, and likewise he knew that both of them were already putting themselves back together, refocusing, as the larger implications of what had been revealed became obvious. They were indeed at cross-purposes. _She was spying on us,_ he forced himself to label.

"It won't do you any good, you know," she tried. "Helping her."

 _Carello._ Had Anka already picked up on his possible next move? "What makes you think that's what I'm going to do?" He forced himself to look at her to strengthen the bluff.

That quirk of a pitying smile was back. "Because you belong to Pixis -"

"We both do," he interjected gently but firmly, "unless you were planning on revealing yourself today."

Anka rose from her seat. "No, you're right." She stepped away from the table and he rose too when she came to his side of it. She folded her arms and looked up into his face, smiled more strongly in a way that he didn't like - in a way that was foreign to him. "Since we're friends…"

He didn't give her the corrective interruption she seemed to expect.

"Since we're friends - and for you not mentioning anything just yet - I suppose I can give you a head start before I go to the Commander-in-Chief and see what he wants to do about this. How about two hours? Does that sound fair? You could probably make it to Klorva by then. It'd take them another two hours to reach you. Enough time for you to get away - if you wanted."

"Is that so," Gustav mimicked her tone from earlier and did not really _ask_ the question. He hadn't realized his face had set itself into so deep a frown until he blinked his dry eyes and released its muscles in a small sigh. His brow ached.

When he didn't elaborate, Anka's face softened and she offered, "It doesn't have to be like this. It doesn't have to get ugly. We could even keep the peace, if you wanted. Trade for trade. I could even not mention it to Zackly that you know."

Gustav couldn't even contemplate the idea. "What if I were to use this 'head start' you're being so generous with to go to Pixis right now?"

Anka shrugged. "Whichever is your priority - to tell Pixis, or to warn Carello that we know she has Annie Leonhardt. But I think _I_ know what you'll choose."

He fixed a cold stare on her light brown eyes. "One day you'll be wrong."

She looked at him almost kindly, then, to the point that he could almost pretend that their conversation had never happened, and tilted her head, "But not today." She jerked her chin to the door and stood aside.

As he passed her he said, "This conversation isn't over."

* * *

Annie blinked slowly, and stirred the oatmeal in front of her just as slowly. The conversation around her felt like it was coming through water. It didn't help that they were all speaking so vaguely of the trip to Shiganshina - she had nothing to latch onto as far as why they were going or even what the current state of the world was.

She hadn't wanted to wake up. It'd taken a lot of reluctant effort on both her and Annie's part to get her up, dressed in Mercedes' spare clothes, and downstairs. She felt better able to move but was still stiff and uncoordinated, and the mystery of her crystal's release still plagued her.

Eating was difficult, though logically she knew she had to in order to get her strength back. Logic also told her to attempt to steer the conversation to glean the information she needed, but just like every time she placed a bite of oatmeal in her mouth, every time her mind tried to take a bite out of the problem at hand she felt nauseated. She felt rather than saw the suspicious looks passed her way at regular intervals.

Annie could at least gather that if Mercedes' squad and who she presumed was her grandmother knew of her identity as the Female Titan, for some reason they weren't talking about it. It didn't take her long to tell that the grandmother's glances were less frequent and more curious than suspicious, and the squad's were far more untrusting.

 _Then the grandmother - Julia - doesn't know,_ Annie deduced, _but they do._ She didn't see what importance this could have, but it _was_ clear that Mercedes placed an immense amount of stock in her. Not that it was needed, because they seemed practically identical apart from their age.

"Are you done?"

Annie sat back and looked up at the dark-skinned soldier, Oliver, who stood over her with a pair of bowls stacked in his other hand. His voice hadn't been unkind. "Yes, I am." He took hers from her.

"You should leave soon, at least get yourselves out of the immediate area," Julia said as she stood with a scrape of her chair, "and then leave the Wall once it's dark and Titan activity is low."

Annie kept still. She debated whether to upset the apple cart and mention that if she shifted they'd have less problems. As though reading her mind, Mercedes glanced down the table at her and fixed her with a stern look.

"Precisely my timekeeping," Mercedes said. "Plus the rest of the day gives me time to rustle up some other provisions."

"Like spare horses," Oliver chimed in from his place at the sink. "And gear."

"You can take ours," the tall blonde - Baena - offered immediately.

"You'll need them and I won't make you any more complicit in this than you already are," Mercedes said.

"Shame we don't have more like Sabine;" said Julia as she moved to clear away the small tray of preserves and cinnamon from the table, "Bashka's too old but one horse of Carello stock is worth four regular."

"You're horsebreeders," Annie said without knowing why.

Mercedes rounded the table. "That's part of what we were, yeah, when we were outside the Walls." She headed up the stairs, calling, "I'm going to get changed and armed. Can somebody start on the packs?"

"Already on it."

Annie's eyes unfocused as the group that remained began to move with unusual proficiency, as if this had been done many times before. Provisions were wrapped and laid on the table, saddlebags were brought in and stuffed, ammunition stacked, jackets and cloaks laid out. She noted with interest that two non-standard rifles and their equally-long holsters were laid on the table, too.

 _What if they've been a guerilla group all along? What's really out there inside the Walls themselves, nowadays?_ Annie speculated and looked at the front door nearby. _It seems like it's even worse than it was._

With difficulty, Annie pulled herself to her feet and trudged to the front door. Though she knew she was being watched, she opened it. Bright late morning sun and a cool breeze buffered against her and filled her lungs. She thought of Reiner and Bertholt, and let herself feel the stab of pain that followed.

 _Where are you? I'll find you. Soon. I'm sorry._

She heard the clop of hooves growing closer, and then a single horse was ridden through the gate in the low wall around the property. A male Garrison soldier was astride it and looking around in concern. "Carello!" he called, and dismounted.

Annie was pulled backward and to one side, and turned to see Mercedes already downstairs again. Her face was curious but not alarmed. "Friend of yours?" Annie asked, managing to see him tying up his horse to the healthier of the two plum trees in the front yard.

"Just stay out of sight," she murmured and moved past her, off the front doorstep. She'd dressed all in black, like she'd been last night, and it made Annie wonder if it was a uniform of some kind. She noted a sheathed knife on Mercedes' right thigh, and then she was pulled completely away by Baena and the door pushed closed.


	9. Chapter 8: Sub rosa, spina

**Chapter 8: _Sub rosa, spina_**

Gustav stepped away from his horse and watched Carello approach him. The long, hard ride had been exasperated by the thoughts running through his head - of everything that'd happened since Pixis had given him the goddamn medal, including Anka's...diverting of her course, and what that now meant for him. Oddly, seeing Carello - the ex-soldier he was spontaneously risking his career for - made him want to blurt out everything and made him mute at the same time. He felt tired but knew it wasn't the time to be so.

"Verkonnen," Mercedes greeted blandly, but didn't seem to know what else to say. He couldn't blame her, he supposed.

They met in the middle of the cobbled yard. She looked far more refreshed and confident than when he'd seen her last and the relief this gave him made him realize that he'd been worried about her far longer than just today; Anka's remark had merely worsened it. He also realized that it was mostly in the same way he'd worry about a prized possession or a favorite racehorse, and tried to put this out of mind. She wasn't military anymore, he reminded himself. She had no career to grow alongside his - this wasn't his future Captain much less fellow Commander he was looking at.

Gustav collected himself, pulled his shoulders back, reminded himself that he was technically her superior whatever her posture might say.

She crossed her arms. "Did you come all this way to puff out your chest at me?" she said before he could speak.

He deflated a little. "I'm glad you look like you're going somewhere," he said instead of retorting, nodding at the gear harness she wore. "I came to warn you."

"Spy on me, you mean," she rolled her eyes at him and took a few steps away from him to the plum trees.

He followed her into the scent of ripe fruit. "The exact opposite you suspicious idiot."

Carello turned, a little stunned. Then she too composed herself and said, "I'm listening."

"You need to leave immediately," he said, his heart beginning to hammer in his chest again. He shook his head once, "I hope to all that's good that this isn't true, but Zackly believes you have Annie Leonhardt with you - forces will be arriving within the hour to apprehend you both and I doubt there's anything anyone can do to temper his retribution."

He was a little unnerved by the way this didn't seem to bother her, and even moreso by the way she didn't deny the accusation. Instead, she only asked, "Who are his sources?"

The extra weight he'd been carrying since breakfast came back to rest on his shoulders, but he refused to bow to it. "My counterpart, Anka. She's...been working for Zackly. Covertly, in much the same fashion you and I have been working for Pixis," he frowned. "That's how she must have known you'd been to the palace," he added, mostly to himself.

"I remember seeing her," Carello added. This made him feel worse, as though it confirmed what hitherto could have been written off as a bad dream, and he was surprised to see Carello's face soften a little upon seeing it. Gustav breathed in deep and attempted to reset his expression into a more neutral one.

"Dare I ask where you were going?" he asked before she could pry.

"No," she said, frustratingly simply. Without invitation or further comment, her expression thoughtful, she turned on her heel and began to head back to the house. Dappled sunlight fell through the tree boughs and slid into her glossy curls.

Gustav reached out and caught her shoulder, "Carello - is it true?"

She stopped, turned her attention back to him. He released her. "I think you've known the answer to that ever since you heard she went missing; you're smart. So more importantly, why warn me if you believe it _is_ true? Why help me? Surely you believe in the concept of punishable offence?"

Of all the things he'd thought about on the way here, he was surprised to discover that hadn't been one of them. "Because Pixis was protecting you, and that means so shall I," he said quickly and hoped she wouldn't pick up on the mediocrity of that reasoning.

She examined him critically, her head tilting downward just enough to shun the sunlight from her eyes. "Maybe you should think about that before you get any other ideas about helping me. Wouldn't want you to get too far in, Verkonnen."

"A bit late for that, isn't it? Pixis made that decision for both of us."

She shook her head in the same pitying way Anka had smiled at him and Gustav felt a flush of anger at the similarity. "You always have a choice," she corrected.

" _Is it true?_ " he repeated stubbornly, almost growling.

Carello's face softened again; he shifted uncomfortably when she looked over his face, her eyes distant. "You remind me of someone I knew well." She swallowed, turned away again and resumed her walk to the house, called back, "The less you know the better off you'll be. Thank you for the information - you should go now."

But Gustav couldn't leave it at that. He was so accustomed to having more information than most - to knowingly be ignorant of something so vital was practically revolting and he felt insulted by her presumptuous moral superiority. Without knowing exactly how to continue speaking to her, he followed her, though logic told him he should be riding away this very moment. He wondered if she had this effect on everyone.

The kitchen began immediately inside the front door; Gustav froze at the head of the kitchen table laden with armaments and provisions. On his left was an elderly woman that could only be Julia Carello by the way she was expertly inspecting a rifle; Carello herself had paused on his right and just now noticed he'd followed.

"Eh? Who's this?" Julia croaked.

Directly opposite him, however, was the cold, piercing stare of none other than Annie Leonhardt, very much alive and seemingly well. Some part of him had wished it wasn't true what Anka - and even Carello herself - had said.

He felt himself pale despite his best intentions. "You - you _are_ harboring -" he shook his head and jerked Carello back by her shoulder to stand in front of her. "Annie Leonhardt, by the power invested in me, I order you -"

Carello jerked him back by his shoulder in turn, "Stop it. There will be no ordering. I've got this under control."

Leonhardt seemed mildly amused by his threat, as he supposed she would, really.

He whirled on Carello. "Do you? Do you really? For all that's holy, Carello -"

"What's going on?" Julia interrupted, holding the rifle in her hands as if she might intend to use it. "Who are you and what is there to get under control to do with -"

"My name is Gustav Verkonnen and I am Commander Pixis' Aide; more importantly, that there is Annie Leonhardt," he jabbed a finger forward, "better known as the Female Titan!"

The room fell silent; Gustav noticed the faces of the rest of Carello's Jaguar Squad looming in the background over Leonhardt's shoulder. No one except Julia Carello seemed surprised by his proclamation and it horrified him further.

"Granna," Carello uttered quietly to her grandmother across the table.

Gustav watched Julia breathe deeply in and quake, brace herself on the nearest chair. Her lips kneaded together and she glared at Leonhardt, who hadn't moved. After a few long moments, she looked at her granddaughter. "I love you, I trust your reasoning, and I will protect your interests, but you will get this bitch out of my house immediately. Go see your cousins - I remembered I gave them Carello colts for their fifth birthdays, like you. They should do for spares. Have to go out that gate anyway."

Mercedes glanced over her shoulder, "Ol', ride ahead - meet us at the gate."

As though in response, two of Carello's squad - Cullis and Ungabwe - began collecting the various supplies off the kitchen table and bringing them out the back door to presumably where the horses were. With the help of a crutch, Lathan came to linger by the stove; Gustav noticed in his free hand he held a knife in its sheath that matched Carello's.

He returned his attention to the situation at hand. "You'd let your granddaughter leave in the company of _that_?" he asked.

"Well I'm certainly not going to let her stay here," Julia replied matter-of-factly, and pushed past between Lathan and Leonhardt to head out back, too.

Gustav glanced nervously at Leonhardt, who leaned forward on the table as though tired, and glared at him in return.

Lathan passed his former Squad Leader the knife, "Here, figured you may need this more than I do. Ol' has Baena's," he tried to smile. Carello didn't object, but propped her foot on a chair and strapped it opposite her own on her other thigh.

"Remember that choice we were talking about, Verkonnen?" she mentioned.

His eyes fixed on Leonhardt again, who was even managing a cruel smile. "Carello," Gustav said under his breath. He felt desperation trying to get the better of him.

"Would it kill you to call me Mercedes?" She stood upright.

"Would it kill _you_ to call me Gustav?" he spat.

In the moment's tense silence that followed the two of them reassessed one another. Mercedes seemed faintly amused by him; one corner of her mouth twitched upward slightly and her eyes had that sparkle he remembered.

"You don't have faith in me or what I'm doing. That's fine, I didn't ask for it. But I _am_ leaving, and Annie is coming with me - there's something I have to do for the Queen and Annie is best-placed to help me. If we don't leave successfully, humanity's future may be at stake."

Gustav wasn't sure what to say - where to start, even.

Mercedes seemed to sense this, and turned to Leonhardt. "Go out back."

Surprisingly, Leonhardt seemed to detect the point to the order and moreover, agree with it. She moved; he noticed she had a gear harness over one arm and even its slight weight seemed to slow her down.

"I hope that's yours," Mercedes called. Though he found it strange that Annie seemed so docile with all of this, he knew very well there was one reason or another for it and that whatever it was, it was somehow of a lower priority than getting them on the move.

"Yes. Though where you hope to find maneuvering gear I don't know," Annie retorted.

Seemingly not as confident as Mercedes, Lathan shadowing Leonhardt through the back of the house a few paces behind. When they were out of earshot, Mercedes turned back to him.

"Why do you think Pixis gave you and I those medals, but not Anka? Don't you think it has something to do with why you came here, and why I'm standing here waiting for you to offer the help you won't let yourself give, even though you want to?" She didn't quite smile - it was, rather, a curious baring of her teeth and a knowing tilt of her head. "' _Sub rosa, spina'_ \- 'under the rose, a thorn'." She took a couple of steps backward, out of the sun. "Winter will be on its way, soon. The roses are dying; only thorns are left. Which do you think you and I are?"

As Gustav contemplated her words he watched her pluck a gold and bejeweled bangle in the shape of a leaping jaguar from the kitchen table and slip it on her wrist. She turned and headed for the back door.

"You're dangerous, you know," he called after her, glaring at her back. Or rather, it was how right she was that was dangerous - that compelling way she'd spoken, twisting its own thorny branches around all his ideas and morals and taking them for its own. He wanted to believe every word, even if he didn't want to like her.

"Meet you out front," she called back. She grabbed a jacket from the upholstered back of a chair.

"How do you know?"

"You yourself said it was too late. You're still here."

Oddly, he found himself smiling as he watched her retreat through the door. He turned on his heel.

* * *

Outside, Mercedes found that Oliver had ridden ahead with the majority of their supplies and her own stood stamping her feet impatiently, already saddled and ready to go. Baena was reluctantly helping Annie into her gear harness, though Mercedes still hadn't decided whether it was a good idea to arm her eventually or not. Fhalz had propped himself against the woodpile and was trying to disguise his uneasy expression.

"Ready?" Julia asked, catching her attention.

"As we'll ever be, I suppose," Mercedes said. She slung on her jacket and pulled her hair out from the collar. She caught Annie's eye and jerked her head in the direction of Sabine.

"I shouldn't be surprised you won't let me ride alone," Annie sighed.

"You'll be earning your freedoms," Mercedes said.

"Like you earn yours?" Annie shot back quietly as she pulled on her other boot.

Mercedes ignored her.

Baena suddenly tutted. "They can't see _her_." She ducked back inside, returning not long after with the same scarf emerald-green Mercedes remembered Julia giving her - the one she'd worn into Mitras that day she thought she'd have to kill the king - and handed it to Annie. "This was all I could find. Wrap up. Hopefully HQ can spare something a little more weather-hardy."

Mercedes pulled herself into the saddle, and then helped Annie in front of her. Annie's pale, shaking hands wrapped the scarf around her shoulders and far forward over her head, and Mercedes hoped it wouldn't attract _more_ attention than she would without. Julia led Sabine by the reins down the small alley between house and workshop, Baena and Fhalz following on each other's arms, and into the front courtyard. The smell of plums was carried to her on the breeze.

She had to admit she was relieved to see that Gustav was waiting for them astride his own horse. He retracted his raised arm and with it, a plum. He caught her eye but said nothing for the moment, and Mercedes turned her attention downward where Fhalz and Baena stood, looking up at her.

"Well," Baena began. Mercedes could see her lip trembling. "Be safe, please." Her hand reached for Mercedes' and she let her take it briefly, squeezing it back.

"We will."

"Remember the condition," Fhalz added sternly.

"I promise."

Her two friends moved back a little so Julia could lead Sabine forward a few more paces, nearer to Gustav. Mercedes was almost certain she was going to lead them all the way to Karanese when suddenly, Julia dropped the reins, as though reminded of that fact herself.

"Granna," Mercedes began when Julia didn't seem to know what to say.

Julia raised a finger to her lips, and then took her hand in much the same way Baena had done. Her face was stern rather than emotional, a determined smile burning to life on her aged face. "I arm you. I send you, my turning of the tide. And maybe both of us can be forgiven when you come back."

At her beckoning, Mercedes leaned over and let Julia cradle her head in her hands and kiss her crown. "I love you," she said.

"I love you," Julia replied, and released her. She reached into her pocket and procured something; when she pushed it into Mercedes' hand she realized with a laugh that it was a ridiculous number of hairpins. "And put your hair up as soon as you can," she scolded. "Long ride." She stepped back and waved irritably at them. "Go! Off with you! Go find Jean."

Mercedes smiled at them and turned Sabine. She noticed Gustav looking at her curiously, but didn't ask. With a small jab of her heels, they were riding out into the street and on their way to Karanese.


	10. Chapter 9: The Orchard

**Chapter 9: The Orchard**

"I can't promise much," Gustav said as they walked their horses through the open inner gate of Karanese. "I can hopefully get you gear but we'll have to see," he added lowly.

"Anything is appreciated," Mercedes said. "You've already done a lot." She finished coiling the last of her hair and pinned it to the back of her head, completely off her neck, and tested her work by shaking her head side to side. When nothing fell down, she returned her hands to the reins.

"Are we still leaving at nightfall?" Annie murmured, barely audible above the sound of horse hooves and the city.

"It'd be easier," Mercedes murmured back. "We'd have to hide out here." She looked around for Oliver. When she spotted him on horseback on a corner not too far away, they nodded only slightly to indicate they'd seen the other - she was pleased to see that he'd somehow managed to get his own gear, though it'd evidently meant he'd had to change into his uniform too. She returned her gaze to Gustav, who was either putting on a brave front about what he was doing or was genuinely comfortable with it. "It may be best if we separate, and you go to the barracks alone. It'd reduce the risk to you."

"Where do I find you?" Gustav asked.

Mercedes considered a moment. While the Blue Glass was easy to find, it also brought them too close to her aunt and cousins and was a likely place that someone might watch. She didn't know Karanese as well as she would have liked. "The closer to the outer gate the better, I suppose."

He seemed to detect her uncertainty. "There's a small house on the end of the second to last left-hand road leading off this main one. Red door, four windows. It's managed to create an orchard for itself - twelve trees in two rows - should be large enough to conceal you and the horses."

There was something in the tone of his voice that gave her pause, like she'd seen something she shouldn't have, but she couldn't put his finger on it. "Sounds like you're familiar with it," she commented.

He made a face and urged his horse onward. "Five PM sharp," he said and left her behind.

Mercedes immediately made her way through the busy main street to Oliver, and he led them down an alley barely wide enough for the horses that wove them back to the Wall. "He's meeting us closer to the Wall at Five PM," she said. "Hopefully he'll get the gate open for us, too, since I don't think I have enough clout anymore."

The alley sloped downward and ended in a small cleared area that was too marshy to build on; there was a weeping willow on the far end with its tendrils of leaves stirring the breeze and the nearly dried-out remains of a pond that it'd overlooked. There were four horses doing their best to graze - one laden with most of the supplies that she assumed Oliver managed to borrow from the barracks stables, and three others that could only be the Carello stock Julia had referred to judging by their chiseled faces, arched neck and high tail - and Marguerite. No one else was around.

"What're you doing here, Marga?" Mercedes asked as she and Oliver dismounted. Annie slid carefully down soon after, but hung on to the saddle with one arm.

As always Marguerite smiled at them, the sunlight catching her chestnut hair and turning it into a veil of light. "Watching the horses for you," she answered with a happy shrug.

Mercedes gave her a stern look and opened her mouth to chastize the older girl, but Oliver interrupted.

"She helped me sneak them away," he said sympathetically.

"Wait, Jana doesn't know?" Mercedes' eyebrows drew farther downward. She could only imagine what her frugal aunt would do when she found out such valuable horses had inexplicably gone missing.

"It's fine, really," Marguerite waved a hand. "And besides, they belong to us, not her, and both Ada and Val were fine with it too. Well," she grinned, "Val took a little convincing at first." She nodded to a note tucked between the saddle and saddleblanket on the caramel-colored stallion Mercedes remembered belonging to him.

Mercedes walked over and dislodged it, unfolding it to read: " _'I hate you. You still owe me. Look after him.'_ "

Marguerite laughed and nodded at the horse again, "That's Hellion. And those are Celia and Bruno," she nodded at the blue-gray mare and the chocolatey stallion respectively. " _Grandmere_ Julia named them before she gave them to us."

"I can tell." Mercedes patted Hellion's muzzle, making him toss his head. She thought briefly of her father and his ranking as Julia's oft-mentioned 'second-favorite hellion'. She refocused. "We should get the loads evened-out between them," she said, mostly to Oliver. She eyed Annie, who was looking over the small herd. "You're going to ride with Oliver for the time being, at least until we get away from the Wall - I attract too much attention by myself and it seems Ol's managed to go unnoticed in all this. We'll ride out separately - if the two of you and the horses can be right beside the gate, you can slip out ahead of me once Gustav and I get it open."

"I suppose that's my cue to go," Marguerite said. "Ada got engaged yesterday, by the way - have to go help her plan." She gave a smaller smile, "I don't know what you're doing but, good luck!" She embraced Mercedes tightly.

Oliver looked up from removing some of the load from the main pack-horse. "Do you need me to walk you home?" At Mercedes' surprised glance, he suddenly recoiled nervously and busied himself with a buckle.

Catching the inconvenience it'd cause, Marguerite said, "Oh, don't worry about it - you've got enough to do here - thank you for the offer, though!"

"Tell Ada 'congratulations' from us," Mercedes said. "Hopefully we'll be back in time for the wedding." As Marguerite moved away, smiling sweetly at Oliver as she passed, Mercedes was overcome with a sudden feeling of dread for her recently-discovered extended family. Before she disappeared into the alley, Mercedes called out, "Hey Marga?"

She turned curiously.

Mercedes realized she didn't know how to phrase her concern without alarming her, perhaps unnecessarily. "Just - keep safe, please. And thank you. We'll be back soon."

"We trust you!" Marguerite said, and left. 

* * *

The amber light of evening filtered through the small, mostly overgrown orchard, as though carried on the breeze that smelled of apples and plums. The three of them barely spoke while they waited, eyeing the outer Karanese gate looming in the distance. Occasionally one of the horses would grumble quietly to itself or scuff a hoof through the grass. Mercedes distracted herself by passing her eyes over the house Gustav had spoken of with such familiarity - little more than a cottage, with a shabby thatched roof overgrown with a couple of generations of vines and a broken windowpane toward the back that indicated its abandonment. She wondered what its significance was, as well as why it remained unoccupied when overcrowding was still such an issue and living space at a premium.

Mercedes stood slowly when she heard a horse approaching; its shadow arrived on the street and the grass before it did, and then Gustav emerged past the corner of the house. He glanced casually over his shoulder and then directed his horse into the orchard and a stronger breeze came with him, chilling her bare arms, rustling the branches and causing an over-ripe fruit or two to topple to the ground with comforting, soft _thumps_. He dismounted.

"Thank you," she said, looking past him to see the canvas-covered cargo behind his saddle that could only be gear. "I hope it didn't raise too much suspicion?"

He stopped in front of her and Oliver and Annie wandered closer to be privy to the quiet conversation. "Not too much, but we shouldn't push our luck," Gustav said. He unwrapped the cargo and began to untie it, and it was then that Mercedes realized it was only one set - her own, judging by the kill marks she'd scratched into the side - and four extra cylinders of gas. This hadn't been in the plan but Mercedes had to allow Gustav his own judgment, and support it. They caught one another's eye, and Annie's objection followed a second later.

"Not only won't you let me ride by myself, but now you won't arm me?" Her voice was stronger than it had been since she'd woken.

"Listen to yourself," Mercedes said, rolling her eyes and turning on her heel. "Do you really think I'd arm you? I said you have to earn your freedoms and I mean it. Besides, like you need gear to defend yourself should it come to it."

In contrast to the passivity she'd seen the last couple of days, Mercedes saw a flash of anger and frustration. Mercedes felt her body tense and didn't have to look to know Oliver and Gustav were doing the same. "You don't trust me. Fine. I don't trust you either. We knew that from the beginning. So before I go anywhere with you you're going to answer me this: where are Reiner and Bertholt?"

"They're out _there_ ," Mercedes answered with gritted teeth. "The last they were seen was when they kidnapped Eren and the Scouting Legion rescued him; they retreated. I don't know where but they're not in these Walls - you and I are going in the same direction, whether we like it or not."

She and Annie challenged each other's eyes for a moment; she watched Annie's face shift from the anger and defensiveness to worry and despair, and finally to stoicism again as she moved away. In seeing those emotions in Annie Mercedes was reminded that she felt the same, but equally as quickly clamped down on them. Annie was moving more confidently now and Mercedes knew that her physical vulnerability and emotional docility wouldn't be an advantage for long. At her nod, Oliver shadowed Annie surreptitiously a few paces, disguising it by checking the horses.

Mercedes turned back around and, with Gustav's help, armed herself with the gear he handed to her piece by piece. They worked in silence for a minute or two and in it, Mercedes felt the first flutter of nerves. Would Annie continue to work with them? What would they find at Shiganshina?

She barely heard Gustav say, "I should be able to get the gate open for you."

"Thank you," she murmured. She checked the blades - they were all fresh. Another moment's silence, and then she asked, "Whose house is this?"

Gustav hesitated, then locked one of her gas cylinders into place. "Mine. I bought it a couple of years ago from the son of the original owner, who'd moved away after his parents died and didn't want anything to do with it anymore. Figured I'd fix it up once I was ready to start a family." He made a soft noise of surprise. "I suppose no one really knows about it, come to think of it."

Mercedes looked at the moss creeping its way up the nearest stone wall, at one point painted white. She wondered if he would ever get the chance to settle, now that she'd gotten him involved. Would even those less complicit, like Adrienne and Marguerite? A couple of times she'd wondered about it for herself and Jean - a house like this, maybe, or even going back to the ranch one day - but if it wasn't likely for more innocent individuals, then what hope did she have?

"Jean - your fiance?"

She wasn't sure she understood the question but its closeness to her thoughts - as close as Gustav was while he fitted the reel at her back - made her laugh, partially in discomfort and partially in jadedness. "No," she said, because it seemed the most appropriate response. "He's not."

"But he's why you're going."

"One of the reasons."

"To one day have a home and a family with him, if anything's left of us in the Walls. We want the same future and that's why I'm helping you, if you were wondering." He finished with the reel and they stepped away from one another. They transferred the spare gas cylinders from his horse to another. "Does anyone know about _that_ future you wish for?"

Mercedes thought for a moment and realized, "No."

"Then maybe when you get back, we should make a greater effort toward obtaining it. I'm hoping to take Pixis' place one day; I'd like you to stand alongside me as a Captain, or higher. You were right when you said the roses are dying." They paused beside Sabine. Gustav looked thoughtful and stroked her mane and she leaned into the touch, nudging his shoulder playfully with her velvety nose. "More and more lately I've come to think that we've been misguided into believing that the Walls were a sanctuary where we could flourish if only we were could be rid of the corruption that tried to rot us. We can't derive our strength from it anymore - we have to reach farther out, go beyond, and then come back."

"A walled garden," Mercedes mused, remembering Julia's words.

He nodded to himself. "Maybe I knew this all along and that's why I bought this house - I had to get away from it before I could come back and treat it properly. I don't know - and it's none of my business, really - but it seems that's what you have to do, too, in more ways than one. Maybe he had to, too."

Mercedes recognized the reference to Jean, and looked away. She breathed in deep. "You'll be all right, here?" she asked.

Gustav conjured a smile. "I'll manage, and Pixis isn't compromised yet. Still plenty of thorns." At her smile, he averted his attention to the sinking sun, "You should go, while there's still enough light to get far enough away. I'll go get the gate to open. Good luck."

He swung himself into his saddle, nodded to her and Oliver, and ducked under the low-hanging bows of the trees until he was in the street, and then rode away. Mercedes waited until she couldn't see him anymore before she stirred back into action again.

"Loop the horses, Ol'," she said. "And go ahead and make your way with them to the moat by the gate, with Annie. I'll take one with me for show, and go down the main street so Gustav has a point of reference."

"Sure, Boss." Oliver unlooped one of the horses and tied it instead to Sabine's saddle pommel.

"As soon as the gate's open enough, go - don't wait. Once we're out, head straight until we can regroup. Don't engage any Titans you encounter unless it's necessary." Mercedes slapped him on the back. "Be safe."

Final preparations made, Annie reluctantly got into the saddle in front of Oliver, the scarf still pulled far over her head. Mercedes saw the small herd off; instead of going right, like Gustav, Oliver took them left to go the back route to the gate.

Once the numerous _clips_ and _clops_ of the hooves had died away, Mercedes mounted Sabine and took one last fortifying breath of the trees and the earth and the sweetness of the wrecked garden. She reached into her shirt, pulled out Jean's draft of a letter, kissed it, put it back; her heels nudged Sabine's ribs and they moved forward.

She used the street that ran parallel to the main drag for as long as she could, and rode slowly to give both Oliver and Gustav time to get in position. No one seemed to pay her too much attention despite her wearing maneuvering gear without a uniform. The sun was sinking below the rooftops and consequently, came in slats through the buildings, blinding and illuminating in turn. When the houses and business petered out and she could go no farther, the no-man's land of the potential breach zone and the moats stretching in front of her, she turned right one last time to re-enter the main street. She glimpsed Oliver moving into position in the shadows at the base of the Wall to the left of the gate; from this distance it was difficult to tell Annie rode with him, for which she was grateful. Mercedes stopped in the middle of the road to wait for the gate to rise. She turned her head to look back at Karanese and who exactly might see her leave.

Her blood ran cold, colder than she felt it to be already. On horseback a few meters away with a retinue of six soldiers pointing rifles in her direction, was Commander-in-Chief Zackly, an amused smile on his face; Gustav lay prone on the cobbles in front of him and the back of his head was bleeding. A few civilians had gathered behind the small force, their faces curious and uncertain.

"Why, you look positively dressed for war!" Zackly said.

Mercedes sat up straight in her saddle, attempting not to be intimidated. One hand instinctively drifted toward the rifle in its saddle-holster.

"Don't bother, little cat," Zackly called to her in that overly-familiar way she so detested. "I'm going to let you leave, though I'm not sure what it is you're up to."

Though this confused her, she drawled back, "Is that so?"

At Zackly's nod, one of the soldiers shouldered his rifle and raised a red flag, waving it high. There were several shouts and tremendous clanks, and a rumble as the gate began to draw up. The ground shook.

"I figure you belong out there, anyway," Zackly said over the noise. "And it will entertain me. What a headline it'll make tomorrow, don't you think? 'Dead Warden Rides Out Alone, Joins Titans'!"

Mercedes scowled at him, clenching her reins, watching the flag continue to wave like her temper. She eyed Gustav, wished there was something she could do. The air currents stirring at her back were trying to pull her out of the gate. She swallowed hard, and it felt like thorns were pushing down her throat.

"I must say, I'm interested to see how you'll fare out there, until I let you back in," Zackly continued, his chin raised. "But don't worry, I will let you back in eventually - you know how much I enjoy it!" He grinned.

She just about heard the whinny of the other horses as Oliver urged them out; Zackly looked over her shoulder, intrigued and frowning. She took it as her cue. Mercedes turned Sabine and the spare, and bolted.


	11. Chapter 10: Warden's Exit

**A Note from the Author:** Thank you for your patience during my November hiatus! I'm glad to be back.

* * *

 **Chapter 10: Warden's Exit**

Mercedes rose in her stirrups and leaned forward - it felt as though both Sabine and the spare, Bruno, were beneath her and the two of them seemed elated to be galloping. She was glad of it; the gate was already lowering again and forcing her headlong into the grabbing arms of two Titans trying to wedge their way under. She couldn't see past them to tell where Oliver and Annie were.

Mercedes rapidly assessed what space was left as an escape - only a little on the outer edges, an even smaller gap between the Titans. The gate was making the Titans crouch as it thundered downward and they were maybe in excess of ten meters. There wasn't much room or time to combat them.

Cannonfire from the ramparts distracted one of them, hitting its calf, but the other slipped inside and ahead. Mercedes gave Bruno more slack and he fell into single-file behind Sabine. She drew one blade, but wanted to avoid using gas if she could. The Titan reached for them; at the last second she jerked Sabine left, veering them until they nearly hit the wall as they ran past the Titan. Mercedes struck out and severed its fingers, then with her free hand grabbed the saddle pommel and dipped her body down Sabine's flank out of the way of the second Titan's grab. Sabine darted through the second Titan's bent legs and Bruno danced after them.

Mercedes pulled herself back into the saddle once they were out in the open air tinted deep orange with the last of the sun. The slow shadows of Titans ambling their way blended with the long, still ones of trees and ruined buildings, and it took her eyes a moment to adjust. Eventually, though, she spotted Oliver making a beeline directly ahead just as she'd asked. She urged the horses faster to catch up.

When she got to them, the horses merged with one another into an undulating patch of floating earth, moving as one. Mercedes didn't so much as ride up beside Oliver as flow toward him.

"Time to veer west," she shouted over the hooves beating the plain. "I want to follow the Legion's likely last course as close as we can."

"They wouldn't have taken a different approach to their normal?" Oliver replied over Annie's head.

With a sharp pain in her chest Mercedes thought again of Jean and how he hadn't spoken to her before he left. "There's no way of knowing for sure. Just follow my lead."

"Always." 

* * *

Mercedes knew at least that the Scouting Legion had headed out from Karanese, and there were likely two ways they went from there: either they then stuck to the shadow of Wall Rose and then crossed over to the nearest Forest of Giant Trees, or went directly there from the gate. Once they reached the trees, they could either then cross the gap to ride in the shadow of Wall Maria until they reached Shiganshina, or travel through the middle territories between the two Walls. While Titan activity was slow due to nightfall and they'd brought lanterns, Mercedes didn't much care for risking their safety early.

She took them along the shadow of Wall Rose where historically the land was a little clearer and would be easier for the horses, keeping it on their right. They reach the closest Forest before dawn by her estimates, and if it was going to take them another three to four days at least to reach Shiganshina, due to their small numbers - and the questionable company of Annie - she knew it'd be better for them to travel at night. They could camp in the first Forest for the peak of day, giving her time to determine their next stopping point for the next dawn.

The lanterns swayed on their crooks ahead of their horses, the light panning strictly ahead, reaching for the shred of turquoise twilight on the horizon, due to its shutters and thus not allowing much backward. Mercedes trusted Sabine enough to look briefly away from their course, at what she could see of Oliver and Annie in the dark.

She wished Oliver hadn't come. He likely wouldn't have much of a career left when they got back due to him effectively deserting his post and there'd be little anyone could do to defend him; Mercedes didn't think herself worth the risk, but evidently he did. She thought again of the promise she'd made to Fhalz to bring Oliver back, even if she left everyone else behind - what had seemed so natural a request before now seemed less clear in light of under what condition Zackly would let them back in, if he truly did at all. Not to mention what might be waiting for them when they returned.

" _Don't worry, I will let you back in eventually - you know how much I enjoy it!"_ he'd said. He knew that she knew that tendency of his, ever since their conversation only yesterday when he'd been perhaps too honest, told her perhaps too much. She hated to think what he'd do to readdress the balance and images were immediately conjured of Historia, and Julia. Mercedes had no choice but to bring back reinforcements - if there were any to be found.

And what if there weren't? What if the worst had truly happened and the Scouting Legion was no more? All she'd have would be Annie - and she wasn't even sure if she had that.

The girl in question had pushed back the hood of the scarf and was looking ahead to the twilight. "What day is it?" she suddenly asked the dark.

"What?" the question baffled Mercedes.

Annie didn't look at her. There was a small plea in her voice as she repeated, "What day is it?"

Mercedes nearly scoffed, but Oliver had more sympathy. He said, "Thursday, 30th June." After an odd pause, he added, "Year 852."

Annie's jaw fell slack, Mercedes could just about see, but she said nothing more. Mercedes herself was more occupied with the fact that she'd taken Oliver away from practically everything he cared about two days before his birthday, and replaced it with night rides and the ever-looming prospect of death. 

* * *

It was completely dark by the time they crossed the long gap between Wall Rose and the first Forest of Giant Trees, which nestled as an impenetrable shadow in a dip in the land and as a result, made them go a little slower to save the horses' ankles. The sky was completely covered in cloud and as a result, what Titans they encountered were completely still.

The land evened out at - as far as she could tell - sticks of former houses on the edge of the trees, and a nearly-overtaken road. "The road'll take us through. I want to be on the opposite side of the Forest before we stop. I know we've been riding for hours but just a little more, please," she said.

Hooves began to clop rather than thud. Night creatures flitted across their path and the smell of pine and fungi engulfed them in woody musk.

 _This was the same forest Jean carried me through, when he chose not to leave me for dead,_ Mercedes remembered. _This is where I chose to tell him everything, where our opinion of one another began to change._ She almost wished she could identify which patch of road he'd laid her beside, grab a handful of the earth that'd been beneath them. But she couldn't - she had to drive them on.

It took them maybe another half an hour to forty-five minutes to reach as far as she wanted; the trees and undergrowth were growing thinner, and any farther and they'd be too exposed. She thought she could see the sky growing from black to charcoal gray with its first thoughts of dawn, shredded through what few gaps in the canopy there were. She slowed Sabine to a walk and the others behind her did the same, and finally they stopped and dismounted, walking off the road without her having to say.

"You want a fire, Boss?" Oliver asked as he got a good grip on the rope that looped most of the horses, leading them between the trees.

Mercedes took the lantern crooks from him and staked them in the ground. "May as well - a small one," she said. "Only an hour or two 'til sunrise. I'd like us to sleep as best we can in the day and travel at night; we don't have the manpower or the luxury of resources to fight our way over Titan territory during the day." She didn't mention it, but her primary worry was that should Annie decide to work against them, she might use the Titan-calling cry Mercedes had heard about. She hoped if that happened its effect would be lesser at night.

Annie caught her eye as she leaned in the lee of two buttress-like tree roots, and Mercedes was hardly surprised that Annie seemed to have caught the unspoken thought. Momentarily she looked away, up and around at the Forest. "This is where I hunted Eren," she said.

Mercedes was surprised that Annie would bring that up, and presumed that she'd only done it to try to rattle them. Luckily Oliver was busy tying up the horses and didn't seem to hear. "Where you lost, you mean," she countered, and began to forage for firewood.

She was met with nothing but stony silence.

Mercedes rolled her eyes. "Whenever you're done trying to threaten me, how about you make yourself useful and make a fire pit?"

"Trying?"

"Yes, trying," Mercedes said and laid another piece of kindling in her arms. "It's been a long day so I may or may not have mentioned this, but if _you_ try anything I don't like you're not even going to have time to be sorry."

"Speed was never your best asset. And you have to sleep at some point."

Mercedes chose not to focus on the fact that Annie didn't seem to be joking and that a threat could very well be imminent. "Guess I'll have to sleep with one eye open."

Annie didn't move to help so Mercedes dropped the firewood to one side and began to scrape back moss and grass with her boot, duck back to the road to find stones for a ring. In her periphery she saw Annie fold her arms and wander a small ways away. Oliver emerged from the undergrowth with the tent pack. He gave Mercedes a worried look as he set it down; she shook her head in what she hoped was a signal for him not to worry.

"Who was the older man - the one that saw you off at the gate?" Annie asked. The threatening undercurrent was gone from her voice.

He was the last person Mercedes wanted to think about. "I don't see why that matters to you," she said flatly. Done scraping the dirt, she crouched to lump the stones into place with heavy thuds.

"Evidently it does to you, and you're the one who took me so I think I should know," Annie said. She placed her back to a tree and slid down it to sit with her knees raised. "You've kinda forced our interests to be the same - maybe you'd better start explaining why."

Mercedes practically threw the wood she'd gathered into the stone circle, and then sat back with a sigh. As she debated whether it'd be a good idea to divulge information to Annie, Oliver worked on lighting the fire.

"Why are we out here, alone?" Annie rephrased. "You said the Queen asked you. What happened to the King?"

Mercedes had forgotten that Annie didn't know any of that. She cracked a grin.

"And you're obviously not in the military anymore though I'm assuming he," Annie jerked her head at Oliver, "is an old squad member, same as those other two at the house. Are you a guerilla? A spy?"

"Heh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Mercedes said. Annie was trying to figure out the current state of the world, she knew. In her situation Mercedes would be doing the same - it was the first step to getting a better handle on the situation and determining what to do, and Mercedes wasn't sure she wanted Annie to be able to do that.

"I'm not sure if I would, actually," Annie commented.

Mercedes figured she'd start with the things that would be least harmful for her to know. "By 'Queen' I mean Historia Reiss - whom you knew as Krista Lenz. And the man I talked to at the gate was Commander-in-Chief Darius Zackly. King Fritz was deposed in a coup, and the true monarch - Historia - put in place."

Mercedes both felt the warmth of the fire and heard it spark into life, and likewise saw its growing flames reflected in Annie's icy eyes as she processed this new information. "And you? Why would the Commander-in-Chief open a gate for you, after knocking out the guy who was going to do it for you anyway? All that sneaking-away of equipment when you're no longer military…"

"Why is what I am so important to you?" Mercedes changed tactic, and sat up straighter with a frown. "I didn't kill you on sight and as I said the first night, I'm interested in protecting you -"

"For your own ends."

"- so what else do you need to know?" Mercedes tilted her head.

"Are you your father's daughter?"

"Like you were?" Annie was quiet, and Mercedes made herself more comfortable in her silence; she leant back on her hands and stretched out her legs, crossing her ankles. "You don't seem to know the Commander-in-Chief," she reflected.

Annie drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "Why would I," she shrugged. "I'm guessing that's your real boss."

Mercedes' skin crawled at the idea, and covered it with a scoff. "I thought you were smarter than that." Her hand found a smaller twig, plucked it from the ground and snapped it, throwing it into the fire. "I have none, fortunately for you."

"Whatever the reason we're going to Shiganshina it must be pretty serious, but why do you care? Jean, yes, but," Annie looked over Mercedes' shoulder, presumably at Oliver, "I don't see why you're taking such a big risk or why a monarch would ask you of all people."

If nothing else, Mercedes wanted Annie's attention away from Oliver. But she didn't have an exact answer. "Duty. The same kind that drove you to do the things you did, I suspect."

"But you're free of duty. You're not military."

Without thinking Mercedes said, "No, I'll never be free of it - I'm the Warden now." In the confused silence that followed Mercedes glanced at Annie and found a perplexed frown. "You can't leave your duty behind, can you? Even if it is 'former'. Neither can I." Another moment and she gave a quick, fake smile and stood. "Now, if we're done playing twenty questions. Let's get the tent up, Ol'."

Annie leaned back against her tree. "'Warden', huh?" She gave a huff of laughter. "Wardens are supposed to guard things, watch them - stay around them. And here you are being sent away from whatever you were the ward of..."

As she and Oliver unpacked the tent the first flecks of rain began to fall, but Mercedes was more preoccupied with Annie's words - an offhand comment, she was sure, but one that made her think. It was a little as though Zackly had let her out because he'd effectively be sending her away and while Mercedes had been nervous enough about leaving Julia, her squad, and her cousins, that couldn't have been in his scope yet. Consequently the only other thing of significance that Mercedes had any link to was, briefly, Gustav, and barring him, Historia.


	12. Chapter 11: Interrogations, I

**Chapter 11: Interrogations, Part I**

Gustav awoke with his face on a cold floor. He groaned as everything began to ache in unison and the dregs of his disjointed dream bled away through the gaps between the flagstones beneath him. He never drank, but for a split second he wondered if he'd made an exception for some reason and it'd become a big mistake. Raising his head, dusty bright sunlight hit his face and he squinted. He saw bars over a high, small window, and when he looked ahead of him, his gaze met an iron-bound door with a tinier window blinkered shut.

Everything came back, then.

Gustav pushed himself into a sitting position, knees akimbo, and tenderly pushed his fingertips through his lank hair. At the back of his head they met the scab and the tanglings of dried blood where he'd been struck with the rifle butt. Once he was able to focus a little better he scanned the cell into which he'd been thrown - ten by ten, maybe, and completely bare but at least dry and clean.

He'd been stupid, in retrospect, not to expect Zackly to have sent retinues to the likely exit points, but had to allow that it was unreasonable to expect Zackly himself; Gustav still didn't understand how the Commander-in-Chief was linked to Carello -

 _No -_ he reminded himself of her words, their words - _Mercedes._

He'd been wrong to help her without having all the facts, to help purely because of some far-off, boyish dream that would likely never be achieved. Not now, at any rate. He'd scuppered that dream if it was made public what he'd done, which was likely what was happening at this very moment. He wondered if Pixis would cut him loose in the same way he'd done to Mercedes, and effectively leave him here to rot.

Wherever here was. And when. Gustav had known since his trainee days that for some inconvenient reason he'd always taken a longer than average amount of time to be roused from sleep or unconsciousness, but didn't reasonably suspect he'd been out for longer than a few hours, which meant that it was the next day. Had Mercedes and the others made it out, or did the Commander-in-Chief stop them? He listened but couldn't hear anything outside.

 _Why would the Commander-in-Chief come down himself to find her? How did he know she would try to leave out of Karanese?_ Gustav wondered. _Not to mention I thought his movements were restricted to just the Interior lately._

Once his stomach had stopped churning he carefully attempted to stand and though his head span, it soon stopped. He first investigated the door, which was of course locked, and there was no way to slide the viewing window open from the inside; next he went to the window, which was just high enough to be out of reach even with a jump. Gustav sighed and paced.

 _Pixis mentioned a while back that the Commander-in-Chief was detained by Erwin's orders following the Burning Titan's attack on the Ehrmich gate; the Burning Titan kidnapped Mercedes from there, and the Commander-in-Chief had slandered her and her family…_

It was difficult to recall specifics and as with most things that concerned the Commander-in-Chief, only a very few were privy to the official reports. Nonetheless, considering the reputation Mercedes had garnered following that slander Gustav gathered it must have been significant to have endured following her successfully bringing the Burning Titan back to mend the damage it'd done. After that, Gustav had only had rumors to go on - Pixis had been tight-lipped about their validity and crucially, why the Commander-in-Chief was subsequently released.

 _Darius Zackly…_ Gustav thought of Anka saying his name, and then of the man himself. He'd only met him maybe once or twice in little more than large official groups. He was well aware of the fear most felt for him and the bizarre way the other Commanders seemed to avoid him and did not want to confront his missteps. He was also aware of the rumors of his fighting prowess - and his tendency to torture - but the paperwork to back them up was off-limits. Zackly lived a life that was, to all intents and purposes, untouchable and though the old regime had been toppled, Gustav wasn't so sure that the new one didn't struggle for footing in the shadow of a different danger. If that was true - if it was Zackly they had to fear - then it was even more perplexing that someone with that much power and yet that much distaste of theatrics would have a personal investment in someone like Mercedes. Just one ex-soldier.

"I hope you got out," he whispered to himself.

Gustav heard the muffled _clank_ of a door being opened, but no rattle of multiple keys - so maybe this was a jail and yet not one? - and footsteps approaching. He counted nine steps, and stood squarely in the center of the cell with his hands behind his back. He set his face into a neutral expression. His door was unlocked, maybe even with the same key as the first, and opened.

The shorter but no less intimidating frame of Zackly stood before Gustav in the door's place. He pushed both hands into the pockets of the trench coat he usually wore for official business, and appeared somewhat bored.

"Awake at last, I see," he said.

Gustav decided it was best to keep quiet for now, even when Zackly eyed him implicitly for a long moment.

He continued, tipping his head a little, "Your colleague gave me the impression that you were smarter than how you've acted. Speaking of - expecting to see Anka, were you, rather than me?"

Gustav couldn't help but inwardly admit he was right, but still did not speak. He kept perfectly still.

Zackly sighed, as though tired. "I get what you're doing. I do. As disappointed as I was to find you helping that loose cannon, though, I'm sure this nasty business can be put behind us. I'm not unreasonable, particularly when a career as illustrious as yours is at risk of acquiring its first blemish." He paused, pulled his hands from his pockets and placed them behind his back. "Where has she gone? Carello. And why."

Gustav clenched his jaw. _So unless he's bluffing she managed to leave, still._ He wondered who opened the gate in that case. "I don't see why it matters to you. She's just a civilian. And if she does matter, why didn't you stop her?"

There was the mildest flash of anger in Zackly's eyes. "This will all be over a lot faster if you cooperate, you know."

Gustav wondered what power Zackly really had to hold him here - to do anything, really. He briefly debated confronting him and making a dash for it but decided it likely wasn't the best of ideas. "You can't threaten me," Gustav pushed confidence into his voice, even narrowed his eyes a little.

"Maybe not, but you might change your tune when you consider that no one knows you're here. To all intents and purposes, you are simply missing. Either you talk to me, or I send for her grandmother."

Gustav's moral fiber grew taut; a frown stretched his face before he could stop himself. "Carello's whereabouts matter so much that you'd harm an old woman?"

Zackly guffawed. "Julia's anything but just an old woman. At any rate, it won't be me harming her should it come to that - the ball's in your court, isn't it, Verkonnen?" After a moment of silence Zackly seemed to realize that Gustav was still uncertain what, if anything, to say. "Think on that while you keep your shoulders drawn back for the benefit of the shadows. I have nothing but time." He turned on his heel and left the cell, locking it behind him.

* * *

One of the things Historia was quietly thankful for, now that she was Queen, was an untroubled meal free from the smell of horse and consisting of more than dry rations or bland broth. Although part of her missed being with her squad out in the field with the sun on her back, it was nice to be able to lean back in the shade of a sweet-smelling vine, to take her time. Even the solitude was welcome; it was the good kind - the earned kind, not the imposed kind. She felt safer alone, with less people to watch and guess at.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and took up her fork again, carving out a bite of quiche. A breeze relieved the heat of the midday sun and rustled the washed-out green of the vine blanketing the pergola above her; a couple of star-shaped, trumpet-throated pale pink flowers landed on the small foldaway table they'd set up for her on the terrace. She stared at them as she ate, her thoughts drifting first to the afternoon's tasks and then further out, like the boat on the lake to what lay on the island on the lake…

The peace was disturbed by the clank of the nearby French doors opening, their panes flashing sunlight into her oasis of dappled shade. Somewhat disappointed, Historia set down her fork and took a sip of water to clear her throat.

It was with confusion and more than a little anxiety that she saw Commander-in-Chief Darius Zackly step out into the sun alone and the doors pull shut behind him. Historia set down her glass and sat up straighter. He turned to her and smiled and if her instincts did not tell her otherwise, she would have thought him collegial.

"I'm not surprised to find you enjoying the good weather, your Highness," he greeted and walked over.

Historia gave a quick smile and was grateful there was no second chair for her to offer. "Commander. What can I do for you?"

Zackly took off his trenchcoat, no doubt because of the heat, and she tried not to squint from the glare of his white shirt. Soon, though, he came under the shade of the arbor and she was relieved from the effort. He hung his coat over the crook of one arm and held them in front of him. "Just thought I would check in - don't let me interrupt your lunch. I wanted to ask you if the hawks had returned - if there'd been any word from the Scouting Legion?"

There was no point in lying about the hawks - it was too easily verifiable. "No word, I'm afraid," she said, attempting what she hoped would be considered a docile smile. She didn't know what she'd say if he pressed. She didn't know what she'd say if he called her out, or offered alternatives - she didn't know what to say to him, ever, and she didn't know why. She'd stood up to Captain Levi for crying out loud, whom it made sense to be intimidated by, and here she found her mouth filled with cotton in the face of someone with far less basis for fear.

Zackly did not hesitate. "Ah, well, I'm sure there will be soon. Perhaps there was a storm farther south." He even bounced on his heels a little.

As new as she was to politics and power games, Historia did at least realize that his lack of hesitation meant that he never expected her to tell him even if she _had_ received word, and this knowledge made her uncomfortable. Before she quashed it, she wished someone was here to act as a buffer or to take the reins of the conversation on her behalf - although Erwin had warned her in passing that Zackly was not all that he appeared, there was still so much she didn't know about him. She didn't know enough to begin a guess. And she certainly didn't know what he wanted - not ultimately, much less here and now.

Historia blinked. "Yes," she said and picked up her fork, "perhaps a storm." Despite her appetite being gone she ate at an enthusiastic pace to seem unbothered and give her a distraction.

"There's one other thing."

Historia forced herself to swallow the bite of dry, dense crust. Every sense felt suddenly cloyed with possibilities. Zackly's pause was unnecessarily long for normal, polite conversation, to the point that even she plucked up enough exasperation to meet his eye expectantly. "Yes?" she prompted.

"I thought you'd like to know that your...well, she wasn't exactly a squadmate, was she? Fellow trainee? So long ago…" he laughed to himself as though it were a shared memory, "Friend?"

Historia smiled politely at him.

Zackly eyed her over his glasses and his chuckles died. When he did not look away or speak for a moment longer than necessary, Historia felt her arms prickle under her blouse. He took a deep breath and spoke on the exhale. "The 'Hollow Warden' - Mercedes Carello - seems to have taken a field day outside Wall Rose. One can only guess at her motives - I'm told a squadmate of hers has gone with her."

 _'Cee - Zackly knows she's going to Shiganshina. Is Annie with her? Does he know about the crack in the crystal?_ He looked at her too implicitly for her liking; she put down her fork and sipped her water instead, returning her gaze to his own. "What an interesting turn of events - was that just today?"

"Yesterday evening."

She hummed in feigned surprise. "Odd that it hadn't been brought to my attention before now. What does Commander Pixis have to say about it? I was under the impression that Carello had resigned from service."

Zackly dipped his head, "I haven't yet had the opportunity to discuss it with him, your Highness - I was going there next. Investigations are in progress. As for Carello being in service or not…" his tone lowered and he leaned forward conspiratorially, "it does seem strange that a civilian would want to much less be able to go out that gate. Particularly with a small herd of horses. If I know her at all, which I believe I do - quite well in fact - she doesn't seem suicidal. And this isn't the first time someone has sent her to do their bidding."

They held each other's eye. At length Historia said, "I'm sure you'll keep me abreast of developments, Commander. I have every faith."

"Likewise, my Queen." He did not smile, but put on his trenchcoat and left her on the terrace.

When Historia was sure he was gone, she slumped forward over her little table; the cotton tablecloth batted at her knees in the wind. Her right hand held onto her water glass as though to anchor herself and the condensation smeared over her fingers. She breathed deep; her shaking left hand propped her head up and rubbed her temple. _Who am I kidding - he probably knows everything. But who am I supposed to go to? I'm not sure I can trust Pixis either. And if I risk too many visits to Ymir that will be found out, too, if it hasn't been already. The hawks returned with so little...I don't have anything to work with. Am I supposed to just sit here and wait for Mercedes to get back? I can't hold Zackly off forever - what will he do if he gets tired of my excuses?_ Though she wanted to, she knew she couldn't just put on a mask and run away this time.

A wilted flower fell into her glass. Only half-thinking she drank, deliberately draining her glass in one go, and swallowed it.


	13. Chapter 12: Interrogations, II

**A Note from the Author:** Thank you for your patience on the update front, everyone! I've been waiting to see how events in the manga will unfold as they'll affect things in upcoming chapters. Thanks for sticking with me!

* * *

 **Chapter 12: Interrogations, Part II**

From the roof terrace of his house Pixis eyed the approaching retinue. He sighed to himself, setting aside his scotch. His wife looked at him curiously, also hearing the thunder of hooves. He waved a hand at her and stood, weaving his way through his riot of grandchildren to the vine-covered steps that would lead him down the side of the house. The shade created on the steps by the wall they hugged was surprising chilly, but he did not roll down his sleeves. He tucked his shirt in and pulled his pants up, grumbling to himself.

He wandered forward onto the gravel laid at the front of the house, just as the four horses trotted under the iron arch of his gate. Pixis hooked his thumbs in his pockets and waited. He wished he could say he was surprised that Zackly was here, all the way out in the east of Sina when he was under the impression that he was meant to stay in Mitras, but considering he'd heard rumors Zackly had been in Karanese… At least, he supposed, neither Zackly or his guards looked like they were here to kill him - they would have done so already if they were.

"Can't a man enjoy his day off?" he enunciated over the scuff of hooves on gravel. The guards' horses had stopped, but no one dismounted and Zackly circled him. "You won't come down from there to talk about whatever it is you've come to talk about?"

"I thought you'd like to know," Zackly said, his face stern, "that according to the Queen the hawks haven't come back yet from the Scouting Legion. You know what that means."

Pixis quirked his eyebrows. "Do I? Tell me what it means."

Zackly rolled his eyes. "It means they _have_ come back, and they've come back with nothing. Something has happened to the Legion."

"I'm surprised you of all people would come out here to tell me that," Pixis said and placed his hands behind his back.

His horse tossed its head irritably - Pixis didn't blame it - he'd want to be rid of Zackly too. "I wanted to ask if this might have anything to do with why Carello rode out with horses yesterday."

He'd heard. He'd wondered about it, and wondered too about her squadmate not showing up for patrol. Considering the Female Titan had gone missing, it wasn't that hard to put the pieces together. He eyed Zackly, thought he must be so proud of himself for Carello falling into the position of scapegoat again so readily. That said, if she truly had escaped with Leonhardt, it wasn't part of Zackly's designs.

"How should I know?" Pixis chuckled. "She resigned. She's nothing to do with me anymore. Perhaps I should be asking _you_ that question since I heard you were in Karanese, and the gate was allowed to open to let her out… Quite the coincidence." He raised his chin. "I'd also like to talk about the coincidence of my aide being missing since yesterday, and how someone as high-profile as him going strangely unseen by the locals."

The horse finally stood still in front of Pixis. Zackly looked away, over the yard. His voice was thoughtful, "Can't say I know anything about your aide - Verkonnen, was it? I'll keep an ear out."

Pixis folded his arms. "Is there really a need to be so obtuse, Darius?"

Zackly returned a harsh gaze to him. "I'm sorry, were you going to do something about it?"

Pixis couldn't help but pause, notice the laughter of his grandchildren had fallen silent. The two men regarded one another, unmoving.

"Carello's acting independently, then," Zackly said at length. He pulled on the cuffs of his riding gloves to tighten the fit. "Or on someone else's order. Maybe Smith sent for her, somehow."

Pixis was surprised Zackly would let him glimpse so much of his line of thinking, and then just as quickly realized it was designed to throw him off the scent of his true suspicions. He nonetheless wasn't sure how to respond. He wished Carello had found a way to kill Zackly the last time she saw him and wondered what had prevented her.

Zackly leaned over in his saddle, spoke lowly, "If you are harboring information on Carello's objective or the whereabouts of the Female Titan, I will find out. And if I get confirmation that those two things are linked, rest assured I will take more than your rank away from you."

Pixis smiled, feigning amusement as best he could - Zackly, of all people, was losing composure. "You're showing up in an awful lot of places, lately. Does the Queen know about your breach of traveling restrictions?"

Zackly sat upright. "Like she can do anything if she does. You seem to have forgotten who I am, Pixis." He lifted his reins and turned the horse to go.

"I think _you_ have."

Zackly looked sharply over his shoulder and for a brief moment Pixis thought he'd be struck, but Zackly only scowled more deeply and jabbed his heels into his horse's flanks; the four of them bolted back out through the gate and down the lane.

* * *

Julia turned onto the lane that hosted her home among the other ten or so houses belonging to neighbors she rarely spoke to; hers was at the elbow of the road, on its own somewhat, and only came into view when you were nearly past the others. As her short wall and gate appeared, however, she slowed Bashka to a halt in the shadow of the neighboring house - there were four horses in her courtyard and three Military Police soldiers idling about. Smoke rose from the chimney, meaning Emma Kirstein was home.

Julia frowned, dismounted. She backtracked a little and led Bashka down the gap between her neighbors' houses, not caring that she was going through their yards. She let Bashka's reins go and trusted him to walk with her, her broom as a crutch in one hand while her other took out the pistol she'd been working on ever since she got back from the outside. Bashka took a few larger strides into the tall grass and Julia braced herself to keep pace with him, ignoring the pain in her hip. Under his belly she glimpsed the split-rail fence of her yard; first the side of her house, then the corner, then the back.

When they came to the edge of her property, Julia knelt in the undergrowth beside the fence. She laid down her broom, looked up to find Bashka lingering. "Go on, you old fogey. Break _in_ for once," she slapped his rump, and he walked off along the fence in the shade of the trees.

She returned her attention to the house; the fourth person must be inside and she supposed there was little she could do about them seeing Bashka, and for Emma's sake she had to go in anyway, but she at least wanted some advanced warning of who it was. She pulled her monocle out of her shirt and peered through it at the back windows but as she suspected, couldn't determine anything useful. She huffed to herself and slipped it back down her shirt, cocking her pistol. The broom was left behind as she tucked under the fence and into her yard; she crept as quickly as she was able to the back wall in the cover of the pieces of junk and the makeshift two-horse stable, and caught her breath. She edged toward the back door, open to the fresh air. She could hear voices.

"I wish I could tell you when Julia will be back, but I'm afraid I'm not sure!" Emma laughed. Julia heard the sound of something being poured, and smelled coffee a few seconds later. "She's quite deliberate about not telling me that much. She said she was going to deliver a repair she made but didn't know when she'd be back. I keep telling her she should leave errand-running to me on account of her health but she's a little stubborn."

Julia scowled, laughed once inside that shook her aching, crouching frame. _And to think I was beginning to like you._

"How did you say you know her, Commander?" Emma went on to ask.

 _Maybe it's that Military Police Commander, Dawk,_ Julia thought, and felt a small piece of relief. _But why would he -_

"Friend of the family, long ago."

Julia felt the strength drop away from her body, and like a collapsed dam first fear and then anger rushed in to fill its place. Her heart hammered in her chest and she was thankful it wasn't weak, otherwise she felt she may have died on the spot. "You," she snarled at the ground. She heard Emma chatting happily and obliviously along, but couldn't make out the words. Memories were swamping her. _He_ was here. Emma had let him in - she didn't know any better, had no idea. He was here. In her house. He'd come for her. She was shaking, struggling to stand. Her fingers wrapped more tightly around the pistol.

Julia limped onto the back stoop and into her house, using the walls and the furniture for support. Her eyes found him in the shadows on the threshold of kitchen and livingroom in an instant - she aimed, pulled the trigger.

Zackly was struck in the collarbone; blood bloomed over the shoulder of his trenchcoat. Emma screamed. Julia's curse was her second shot, but Zackly moved and avoided it; her shot struck Joaquin's painting of a jaguar in one corner and it fell off its hook. The front door burst open and two soldiers were dashing in her direction. Zackly was lunging at her and she managed to shoot him again in close quarters in the shoulder, before he was upon her and grabbing both her wrists. His strength was too much for her but she struggled anyway, growling. His smile infuriated her.

"Stand down," he said to the soldiers, and then turned back to her. "Smart enough to make another pistol, but not enough to put away your emotions in favor of stealth?"

Julia spat in his face. He tightened his grip around her wrist enough to make her drop her gun, and was surprised he didn't break it. She glanced at Emma standing over the dropped kettle at her feet, her face contorted in horror.

"You've made this a lot easier for me, Julia," Zackly said. "But I suggest that if you don't want to involve your friend here any further, you'll stop resisting."

Julia turned a critical eye back on the flat gray of his own. "Why are you here?"

Zackly released her, kicked the gun to one of his subordinates who'd approached with one of her dishtowels to staunch either of his wounds, which he refused. She realized with a sunken feeling that he knew she wasn't able to run away - even her small burst earlier had made her hip throb with pain and everything else was beginning to ache, too.

"I think that's a conversation better-suited for elsewhere, don't you?" he said. "I was passing through and I thought I'd stop by."

"How nice," Julia smiled and straightened her shirt with a vicious tug.

"Julia…" Emma said quietly.

Julia looked at her worried face, then at the floor, and sighed. She supposed this had been long in the coming, and moreover, that the risk to Emma was very real. Much as she'd begrudged the other woman she had no wish to involve her in this feud moreso than she already was through her son and Mercedes. "I don't know what it is you want with an old woman, but let's get this over with," she said.

"Wise choice."

* * *

Zackly took her to the Interior, forcing her to ride in front of one of his guards, and though Julia was fairly certain she was better on a horse than the girl behind her and could easily have made a break for it, she was wary of the repercussions to those other than herself. She also forced herself to acknowledge not only the pain in and weakness of her aging body, but the grim fact that this conversation could not be avoided forever and that she may indeed get something useful out of it. She did not feel vulnerable, exactly, but uncertain, and tried to bury it under the knowledge that her granddaughter was safe from his reach.

Julia shuddered as the shadow of the castle fell over them. She'd not been here since she'd brought her plans for the rifles to the then-King Fritz - when she'd lost her daughter. The chill this invoked stayed with her as they entered and she followed him through the myriad of courtyards and halls until they emerged on the other side of one of the far wings, and headed for an outbuilding.

She rolled her eyes. "We should have stayed on our horses. It'll be dark by the time you even begin talking."

"Witty as always," Zackly, in front of her, said. The blood had spread over the shoulders of his trenchcoat like a second cape, and he hadn't stopped to tend to it. She wondered if their conversation was really more important or whether he was using it as another intimidation tactic.

The outbuilding had an additional two floors and was of fairly nondescript stone - she estimated older than the castle itself, interestingly enough - and was somewhat disappointed to discover, when they entered, that it seemed to contain little more than offices. Vacant desks, filing cabinets and empty bookcases were placed at odd intervals on the completely open bottom floor, and they went up railless stone stairs on the right. They were tough-going for her, and she thought at one point one of the guards reached out to help her but thought better of it. The top opened out into a narrow hallway flanked either side with closed doors.

"Leave us," Zackly said over his shoulder.

"Sir?"

"You heard me. I can take it from here."

Julia heard the two pairs of footsteps die away and, eventually, the front door of the building creak open and closed behind them. She got up the last three steps by herself and put her hands on her hips, disguising her deep breaths of pain with a sneer of impatience. "Did you cart me all the way out here to kill me? If you did you shouldn't have wasted our time."

Zackly said nothing, but went ahead down the hall. Morbid curiosity made her follow him. He opened the third door on the right and they entered. The room was absolutely bereft of furniture or decor - all raw floorboards and exposed brick and a single bare window - apart from a single, velvet-upholstered chair that may have once belonged in some noble's sitting room, its front legs toeing the square of evening light. Almost begrudgingly, Zackly gestured to it.

Although Julia raised an eyebrow in suspicion, she wasn't about to let her pride go so far as to object. She sank into it, crossing her legs and sitting back with her arms on either of its own like a throne. She glared at him and as if sensing it, he finally turned to her.

"Your granddaughter sat like that, when she same to see me," he said idly.

"You talk like a schoolmaster disappointed in a pupil and I'm called in for comment," Julia quipped. "What do you want?"

Zackly faced the window and placed his hands behind his back. "Where have you sent Mercedes with the Female Titan?" he asked evenly.

Julia laughed, good and loud. "Ho, that's rich. You - you think I have any idea much less control over what she does. Oh, that's grand." When she quietened, she wiped the corner of her eye and said, "Thank you for that, I needed a good laugh."

"Where has she gone, Julia?" Zackly repeated, his voice a little sterner.

"Do you really expect me to tell you even if I knew? Get over yourself," Julia sniped. "She's not a child - I have nothing to do with her choices and neither is she obliged to tell me anything. That's what being a successful parent is all about - but of course you wouldn't know anything about that." She resettled, folding her arms. She jerked her chin at him, "What did you expect to do about it even if you found out where she went? Have an army of reconnaissance-trained riders hidden somewhere in your jails and dungeons?"

"She has to come back eventually, you know." Zackly looked at her. "And who do you think let her out?"

The two of them were quiet. Julia stared hard at him, impatience rippling through her. She would have almost preferred outright torture - it was far simpler, would be over quicker - to the waiting, to the beating-back of memories. She watched his face grow thoughtful, and wondered why. Surely if he'd had this in mind all along, he would know what to come at her with, no thinking required?

"Did you ever wonder why I didn't do anything to you and Mercedes sooner?" he asked.

This caught her off-guard. "No," she lied.

"It wasn't hard to figure out where Leon had bought land and built in Klorva," he said, "wasn't hard to follow rumors that arose when you two moved back inside the Walls. For many years I thought about simply dispatching an assassin or two and being done with it."

"I assume you're going to regale me with why you didn't," Julia grumbled.

He responded to her sarcasm with a chuckle and for a split second, Julia could swear it was fifty years ago back in Dainis, all of them with a tankard of homebrew in hand. Then he said, "Your youngest was useful to me. How could his daughter not be? I suppose that was it. Of course, then I learned her name."

 _Merce,_ Julia realized. _He's talking about Merce._ She wondered what the point to all this was. She wondered if he'd said anything to Mercedes about her grand-aunt when they'd talked, if maybe that was the reason she'd looked so repulsed to learn of her namesake. If so, she dreaded to think it was some source of continued interest for him. "She's not Merce," Julia said, letting an unspoken threat leech into her voice. "No matter how much you want to ruin our family, snuff us out, you have to see that."

He looked at her, then. He nodded once, slowly, "Merce was the reason I've destroyed you, one by one. If she were, perhaps, to be the reason I stay my hand, wouldn't it benefit you for there to be resemblance?"

Julia felt her skin crawl; her lip curled. She'd known Zackly to be off-kilter, to be a far cry from the man she'd known in her youth, but the more she listened to him and watched him the more she began to realize how psychotic he'd truly become. "If by 'benefit' you mean I get to live another day, I don't think I want to if you're convinced my granddaughter is some kind of reincarnated ghost of something you couldn't have, you vile, depraved fucker!"

Zackly merely stared at her, a small smile on his face.

Julia felt her fury taking over. "What are you waiting for?" she shrieked, and held her arms wide. "Go on and kill me. You know you want to."

His smile widened until his teeth glinted. "You've always been short-sighted - brilliant, but short-sighted. Luckily your granddaughter isn't. Even she would be able to see that it's much better this way, old friend."


	14. Chapter 13: Ever On

**A Note from the Author:  
** Thank you for your patience while this next chapter was written! Enjoy!

* * *

 **Chapter 13: Ever On**

Zackly had left her not long after their conversation, leaving Julia to stew. She had waited well into the night, thinking he'd return and she'd be able to glean more about his motives, but he had not. Neither had she slept, and she was getting hungry - an unfamiliar sensation that had, at first, made her think she was getting sick. And Julia did not have a reputation for patience.

"Fuck this shit," she muttered to herself and rose from the ridiculous apple-green velvet chair. Hobbling to the door, she pulled the handle-less screwdriver she was using as a hairstick out of her mess of curls, and fished around a little more until she found a hairpin - she praised her luck, having thought she'd got them all out the night before. The latter she caught on her teeth and bent it until it was straight. She went to work on the door lock with them both, every so often stopping to listen for anyone approaching.

After a few minutes she heard the all-important _click_ , and stowed her tools before quietly opening the door. She peered out into the hall either side and saw no one. She stepped out and closed the door behind her; a glance up and down the hall showed her that this building had once had a different use, and that the five doors had been replaced with cell-like ones with slide-back viewing windows. She wondered if anyone else had been imprisoned here yet.

"Hello? Ms Carello?"

Julia stopped in her tracks and squinted suspiciously at the ceiling. "Is that you, God?"

"Ms Carello, it's Gustav Verkonnen. I'm in a cell."

Still squinting, Julia hobbled in the direction of the voice - the last door. "So you ended up here too, eh?" she said when she reached it, and pulled out her tools again. "Give me a moment."

After Julia picked this lock too, she opened the door for him. "Thank you," he said, and was immediately looking around.

"No doubt there's someone downstairs. I find it unlikely they'd just leave us here unattended." She looked him over - he was as tall as Esteban had been in his prime. "Good, you're not hurt. I wouldn't have been able to carry you. Come on." She limped away.

"Wait - where are we going?"

"Well we can't stay here. That fucker could come back at any moment." Julia winced with the pain of moving more quickly, but her words had reminded her of the true danger they were in.

"Stop. Let me go first." Julia was not so proud that she wouldn't let him. They both paused at the door, listened, and then determined it was locked. As she picked it, he murmured, "Provided we get out of here in one piece, if you don't mind I would like to know why the Commander-in-Chief is so fixated on your granddaughter."

"That's a long story," Julia murmured back, and pressed her ear closer to the lock to better hear the delicate clicks.

"I'd still like to know it."

Julia rolled her eyes to herself. She wished she'd done a better job of retreating her and Mercedes into obscurity - maybe none of this would have ever happened and so many people wouldn't be obsessed with knowing their story.

The door unlocked after a minute or two, and they listened again before opening it. Julia stowed her tools back in her rat's nest of hair while Gustav went in front of her. They crept down the stairs - he went ahead into the darkness, leaving her to hobble down the stairs one at a time. She resented the pain in her hip and leg; it reminded her of her conversation with Mercedes that she was old and not likely to live forever.

She breathed in and out sharply with every determined step. _But I'm not done yet._

At the bottom, Gustav was already at the front door of the building, listening, and then carefully looking out the window. In the darkness she could barely see him shake his head at her, and point toward the back of the building. She got to the bottom of the stairs and they moved as quickly as they were able farther into the shadows.

Gustav whispered, "Guarded. Perhaps there's a back door."

"Couldn't just incapacitate them?"

"Unlike you and your granddaughter I'd prefer not to draw attention to myself, or harm people unnecessarily."

"Is that what she and I have done? You really are uninformed about the Carellos, aren't you."

It took some searching, but eventually Gustav determined that there was no back door - only a window that took a great deal of effort to open. Julia felt ridiculous climbing out of it into the shrubbery, and gave herself more time than she really needed to catch her breath. Clouds obscured the moon.

"We're on palace grounds, and there are no horses, or weapons," Gustav said.

"There are worse odds." Julia grunted and pressed forward.

"Stop."

"Ay-ah, what now."

"We'll move faster if I carry you. Climb on my back."

Julia peered at him in the dark and stifled her laughter, but a snort came out anyway. "Just when I think I've seen and heard it all!" She did, however, climb on his back and resisted a flirt to amuse herself. "The gallant ones do seem to find her," she mumbled.

After a moment - in which he adjusted his grip on her legs - Gustav said, "I wouldn't call myself gallant." He began the trek forward.

She patted his back. "Onward, brave steed. To Pixis!"

* * *

When Annie awoke she was uncomfortably warm, and the sun momentarily blinded her even though it came through the heavy canopy of the trees. The rain from a few hours ago had made everything muggy and there was only a half-hearted breeze to stir the edge of the canvas that had been pitched over her as a lean-to tent. For a moment, she could have sworn she was at her father's house.

 _No. That's not it,_ she realized with a strange mixture of relief and anxiety in her gut - neither of which she was accustomed to feeling. She briefly remembered her words to Mercedes the night before about being their fathers' daughters, pushed it away.

She thought again about Bertholdt and Reiner, how Mercedes had said that they were out here somewhere. She thought about Mercedes' comments about duty and, inevitably, those thoughts were followed with the final ones she'd had as she sealed herself in the crystal - not knowing whether she'd ever wake - how she'd failed.

To have died and now been reborn in a world that seemed far too tenuous, the only thing she really knew was the ache in her muscles and the ache in her heart for Reiner and Bertholdt, no matter how much their friendship had been based on the very duty she'd fallen short of. She had nothing else.

 _I have to keep going. Mercedes is just a human, at the end of the day._ But going for what? She didn't know - but staying still, she knew, would drive her mad. _I have to move._

She assessed the small camp. Oliver was cooking a squirrel on a spit; she was in his periphery. She couldn't see Mercedes anywhere and, knowing better, she spent a good few minutes listening, watching, waiting. Still no sign. She eyed the horses, then Oliver, who was in her way. Annie rose onto her hands and toes close to the ground, testing; Oliver still didn't notice. She saw the bloodied knife of his that lay near the squirrel skin he hadn't yet discarded. Her body moved without thinking.

She sprang to her feet and dashed forward, her muscles protesting but obeying. Oliver barely had time to turn to look at her - she snatched the knife from its nest of leaf mold and her eyes were already fixed on his own, unpitying, as she grabbed him and re-hefted the knife, prepared to stab it into his throat -

Mercedes slammed into her full-force, and in the next second had grabbed Annie's wrist to jerk the knife away from Oliver. A breath later, despite Annie's grappling not only was the knife at her own throat, but her legs were knocked out from under her. The two of them nearly fell into the fire and Annie felt the ring stones in her back. Annie's free hand swung up to strike Mercedes despite knowing she'd lost the element of surprise, and there was little point in resisting any longer. Something in her needed to get out.

The two of them scuffled on the ground for a few quick moments, until Mercedes ended it with an unexpected headbutt. Annie felt her nose crack and a seething pain ripped through her sinuses, followed by her vision going blurry. Her grip loosened - she dropped the knife. Mercedes let her go and sat on her knees, rubbing her head.

"You dare do anything like that again, and I'll do more than break your nose," Mercedes said. She took the knife and got back to her feet; as she passed she gave it back to Oliver with a semi-exasperated expression.

Annie rolled onto her side, hawked up blood and spat it into the grass. She tenderly felt at her nose with one hand, could feel the swelling already beginning. "Suppose I deserved that," she muttered to herself. It'd been a rash idea.

"Personally I can think of several people who'd think you deserve more than that. But needs must, and all."

Annie watched Mercedes step into the trees, bend, and pick up her rifle and a small fawn. She brought it to Oliver, noting, "No point in shooting an adult - too much to carry." She glanced at Annie with a strange look of disappointment.

* * *

They were around one day out from Shiganshina when the spectral thing Annie had felt pulling at her body took on renewed force. It seemed the closer they got to Mercedes' ever-mysterious goal, the more anxious Annie became; her situation had not improved. There had been no sign of Reiner or Bertholdt, and Mercedes had not given her any more information. Annie, who had once been used to being left to her thoughts, if not preferred it, had found that skill was as atrophied as a badly-broken leg and as a result, she was left to her diet of 'what-ifs' rather than one of directives.

She had not slept. Her body felt stricken with a fever as she lay there in the lee of the knoll that overlooked the creek running through this particular Forest they'd stopped in. Yesterday had been a long stretch of a ride that they'd needed to begin in daylight and Mercedes and Oliver had had to take down a Titan close to dusk - they'd been riding ever since. Annie regretted not having taken the chance to run from them and that too burned in her body and mind. Now, as much as she could estimate in the overcast light - it'd soon be time to start riding again.

Oliver and Mercedes were sleeping, though of the latter she couldn't be sure - it seemed Mercedes had been true to her word and must have been sleeping with one eye open, for every time Annie so much as readjusted a limb her head was rising to look at her. The two of them had taken shifts in sleeping and watching her, but Mercedes never seemed to really be asleep. That alone was enough to perturb Annie after a while. She'd never really spared the energy to hate anyone before but the other girl was getting close.

 _This time, though…_

Oliver was asleep; it'd been his shift to watch her. Therefore, it was likelier that Mercedes was, too.

 _But what are you going to do? Shift? Run? Kill them? Demand more answers?_ Annie honestly wasn't sure. Part of her wanted to kill them just to kill them. And did the answers even matter, at this point? The desire to just be free of all of it was intoxicating.

Annie got up and made the few steps to the creek, not caring if Mercedes heard or saw. She plucked the sharpest-looking piece of slate she could see at a glance from the cool water. It wasn't far to the tree line. What did a horse matter. What did it matter if her shifting abilities, too, had atrophied, and couldn't carry her as far as she wanted? What did any of it matter.

She walked and then, when the plains were in sight with the pale line of Wall Maria on the horizon under a pall of flashing thundercloud, she began to run. Her body protested at first, but the exhilaration of it soon kicked in. She didn't know where she was headed, but she clutched the slate in her palm like a talisman and ignored the footsteps she heard following her - she could outrun them. She could outrun them all.

Annie broke free of the trees and felt what she thought were flecks of rain on her face, but when her vision blurred she realized they were tears. Titans were ambling her way already, having been close by when they retreated here.

"Annie!" Mercedes yelled.

Annie bared her teeth, clenching them to keep the sob behind them. She blinked hard, focused on the Wall. _Let me out let me out let me out._ The sob became a grimace of angry remorse; she bared her free palm and sliced the slate through it. Sickly-green lightning struck and raced through her blood.

It felt good, like a long stretch, but already Annie could tell that something wasn't quite right. It should only have taken her mere moments to grow to full height, right herself, and carry on, but she wasn't even at half height and she was stumbling - part of her chest felt collapsed and one leg was as weak as a newborn's. One eye wasn't focusing.

 _I am weak._ And then - _But you can keep going._

As she struggled to get to her feet she could see the normal Titans converging. Ten or so. They were slower due to the lack of strong sunlight but they had already closed the gap between the trees and her - and Mercedes, who was still running in her direction. She did not have her gear.

Annie felt her Titan form grin and imitate a laugh that came out like a crow's squawk. What did she really think she was going to do? Annie felt drunk on the ridiculousness of it all, despite the danger to herself.

"What do you think you're doing?" Mercedes yelled. She drew the pitifully small knives from their sheathes on her thighs. Her head turned rapidly to look at the Titans.

 _So she doesn't know what she's doing, either._

"You have a chance to start again!" came another call. "If I didn't believe that, why'd I bring you with me?"

Despite herself Annie paused.

"You have a -"

She glanced over her shoulder. Mercedes had been grabbed by one of the shorter ones - too small for what one would think would be a fitting end for her. Despite her struggles and her slashing at it with her knives it was bringing her closer to its mouth. "You have a choice!" she screamed.

Behind her, too far away, Oliver was emerging from the trees.

"You have a choice!"

The words were like stones dropped into the pool of Annie's mind. It was like she'd never heard them before.

Annie lashed out - again her body moved for her, ungainly as it was. She grabbed the small Titan by the head and jerked violently, distorted fingers pincering its neck as she threw it back toward the trees. She did not pause to see what became of Mercedes. Three of the other ones were on her, gnawing, seeking purchase. She yowled and kicked and tore at them, and it became a blur of rending flesh and dizzying half-seen views of the tawny grass and the stormy sky.

* * *

Annie regained consciousness to the distant feeling of water through her hands. Shortly thereafter someone slapped her, and her vision stuttered back into life. Mercedes was frowning into her face and withdrawing her hand, releasing her shoulder, sitting back; they were in the little creek inside the forest and around them, her malformed Titan body's pale, decaying bones were blending with the pinkish flesh of broken trees. Other Titan bodies lined a crushed path from where they sat to the vacant treeline and the plains beyond, painted in the last shades of dusk. The Wall was no longer visible.

Annie met Mercedes' eyes, which were searching her face. She wasn't sure what to say and neither, it seemed, did Mercedes. Oliver, armed in his gear, walked over to them and stood silently nearby. He sheathed his blades.

Annie trembled a little before she got it under control, and said as vacantly as she could, "That was stupid, what you did." The fever she'd felt in her body earlier, however, was broken.

"Yeah, but so was what you did." Mercedes looked over her face again. After a moment she ventured, "I don't know what drove you to any of this - I don't need to. But whatever it was, it no longer exists. You don't have to pretend to yourself that it does. You and I...we've both, in a sense, died and been reborn. We have a choice of what to do with our second lives."

Annie scowled. "Don't become a preacher. I've heard too many of them and that's not you."

Mercedes took a deep breath in, stood. "It's dark. We can make it to the Wall in a few hours and then we just follow it to Shiganshina from there. Let's move out."

* * *

The three of them met the rain about two hours in, and the light from the lanterns scattered among it and made the way confusing in the dark. They had to slow. Oliver had taken rear guard while Mercedes led the way as usual, with Annie riding between them. He was surprised that Mercedes was now allowing Annie to ride by herself but trusted her judgement, figuring she'd seen something in her following the botched shifting.

 _That was too close,_ Oliver thought, recalling the panic he'd felt when he saw Mercedes mere inches from the Titan's mouth. He'd still felt it when Annie attacked; it hadn't been immediately clear if she'd been doing it to help or hinder. He counted himself lucky that he'd had on his gear. It made up somewhat for his guilt over falling asleep on his watch, or earlier, when Annie had taken him off guard and nearly stabbed him. _You need to focus. Some birthday this would have turned out to be, letting your boss get eaten._

He couldn't be sure whether it was the long ride and the nature of the company, but it seemed as though it wasn't just him that was a little off-center. Annie of course, but that could have been fallout from her awakening. Yet Mercedes wasn't really sleeping, he knew, no matter how much he tried to get her to, and sometimes looked suddenly away as if startled by something he couldn't see. She had a habit of keeping her hands busy when she was on edge and by now, she'd taken down and pinned up her hair and braided Sabine's tail and mane several times over.

As for himself, Oliver kept getting the shudders, and as the days had worn on he'd swear every now and again that he heard something - a voice, or the call of some unknown animal. He'd see shadows that didn't belong to anything out of the corner of his eye. Somehow, this ride was different from when they'd gone to rescue Mercedes and come back again and it wasn't just the absence of the others. The horses were skitterish. There was something uncomfortable in the air.

They'd met the Wall, now. It was hard to judge time but Oliver guessed that it'd taken them maybe four hours to get here from the last Forest of Giant Trees, which was no bigger than a copse. They hadn't seen any Titans since and although unusual, it was welcome in the open space. Mercedes was curving their small herd to follow the Wall's sheer face, though he wasn't sure how far they had to go before they reached the gate. He wondered if Eren had been successful in sealing both inner and outer gates - he wondered what could have happened to the Scouting Legion.

Light bouncing back to him off the rain crackled ahead like stardust, and every so often a flash of lightning would illuminate the landscape. Again, he saw shadows that didn't belong to anything moving with them. He felt paranoia tickle the back of his neck.

The inner gate was upon them surprisingly quickly - in the next hour, in which the rain abated but the churning thunderclouds remained. The horses drew to a stop in the mud and the lanterns were raised higher - the inner gate that would lead them into Shiganshina proper was not sealed.

Oliver walked his horse up to Mercedes'. He could make out her frown as she pushed back her hood. "Why wouldn't they have sealed it already?" he asked.

"If they hadn't come back out yet," she said.

"But it's been over two weeks," Oliver said, mostly to himself.

The gateway was even darker than night in front of them; it was impossible to see the town beyond it. Under them the horses were nervously moving from side to side and turning in circles, tangling the ropes that joined them.

They stood in front of it for another minutes or two, and then Annie said, "I'll go first."


End file.
